EVEN those of us inclined to be cynical about the competence of those who run the country have been taken aback by the evidence emerging from the UK Covid Inquiry.
We can allow for the fact that Covid was a colossal public-health issue, the greatest domestic crisis Britain had faced since 1939-45. Ministers had to come up with policies overnight. Lockdown or no lockdown? Should masks be mandatory? What to do about the damage to the economy, about acquiring PPE, about coping with huge, anticipated rises in intensive-care cases, about school pupils, the elderly?
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Dozens of other, equally urgent, questions raised their head. And then there was advent of scientific modelling, much of which seemed to predict catastrophe. Newspaper headlines from that period reflect a situation that was changing by the day if not by the hour.
Panic, confusion and indecision were to be expected as ministers wrestled with the issues to devise a coherent response. The testimony given to the UK inquiry, however, has in lurid detail confirmed all of that, and more, within Downing Street.
Witnesses have spoken to, and uninhibited WhatsApp messages attest to, dysfunctionality, complacency, a lack of discipline, an alarming lack of transparency, mutual mistrust, misogyny, and the crudest of insults. Boris Johnston, the then Prime Minister, habitually blew hot and cold, it is said, over whether to order a full lockdown, and even by the end of February 2020 he was taking the view that the biggest risk was one of over-reaction.
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Lots of vivid details stay in the mind from the last few days of evidence. The shopping trolley emoji that was wheeled out to describe Mr Johnson’s erratic impulses. The assertion in September 2020 by Simon Case, then as now the Cabinet Secretary, that he was “at the end of my tether” with Mr Johnson, who “changes strategic direction every day” and “cannot lead”. Dominic Cummings’s lacerating verdicts on his boss and Cabinet ministers alike, and his misogynist dismissal of Helen MacNamara, the then deputy Cabinet secretary (who had the temerity to point out that oversized PPE that was not tailored for women’s bodies could potentially endanger frontline female NHS staff).
All of this, and volumes more still to come. Anyone who took comfort from the fond belief that the TV satire The Thick of It was a lurid distortion of how government is actually conducted, might now have to revise that opinion.
Thanks largely to his hubris and sundry misjudgements, Mr Johnson has seen his reputation tarnished beyond repair. The UK inquiry – which, it has to be acknowledged, he himself established – has undermined it even further. Were he still in office he would surely have been toppled by the remorseless flow of testimony. The Covid inquiry will continue for many months yet as it seeks to analyse in fine detail the UK’s response to the pandemic, and to see what lessons can be learned.
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At least the inquiry has had access to troves of WhatsApp messages from within the London government. This is in pointed contrast to the situation that applies to Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s former First Minister.
Both her successor, Humza Yousaf, and Kate Forbes, the former finance secretary, have said this week that they did not delete any WhatsApp texts. As The Herald reports, their unambiguous statements have added the pressure on Ms Sturgeon, who has repeatedly refused to say whether she removed her WhatsApp messages.
She has committed herself “to full transparency” but said this week that she could not comment because “responses at this stage are confidential until the inquiry says otherwise” - a defence that incidentally seems to have been demolished.
Though she has submitted her third written statement to the UK inquiry – some 200 pages’ worth – and expects to give oral evidence again next year, it would be deeply concerning if reports are found to be true that she, and Scotland’s national clinical director Jason Leitch routinely cleared out their WhatsApp messages. Mr Yousaf says some 14,000 Scottish Government messages would be sent to the Covid inquiry, but he does not know whether they contain any from Ms Sturgeon or Mr Leitch.
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Even if the Scottish government conversations contain none of the gripping material evident in the Westminster equivalent, the UK inquiry needs access to every last message if it is to understand fully the political considerations that informed decisions. Even though Ms Sturgeon gave regular press conferences during the pandemic, and was considerably more accountable than Mr Johnson was, she should say whether she has deleted her messages. Why would she delete them when she must have known that a public inquiry was inevitable?
The UK and Scottish inquiries are invaluable, however. Their attempts to get at the truth and to see if there are lessons that can be learned are what the country needs. People who lost family members to Covid need the truth, too.
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