UK civil servants ‘smashed to pieces’ in pandemic, says top official

Boris Johnson’s “dysfunctional” government meant “good people were just being smashed to pieces” as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded, Britain’s top civil servant has said.

Cabinet secretary Simon Case told the official inquiry on Thursday that he had found it “very frustrating” to work for Johnson as he apologised for sending strongly worded messages at the height of the health crisis.

Asked about the day-to-day running of government under Johnson, prime minister between 2019 and 2022, Case said it was “definitely dysfunctional” and had been “difficult” for him personally.

“Good people were working incredibly hard in impossible circumstances, with choices where it seems there was never a right answer,” said Case, in post since September 2020. “Good people were just being smashed to pieces. That’s what I saw.”

In a series of private messages shown to the inquiry in recent months, Case accused his former boss of changing “strategic direction every day” and surrounding himself with “basically feral” people. He also said he had “never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country”.

Case on Thursday described these messages as “raw, in-the-moment” reflections and said they were “not the whole story”.

“Many of them now require apologies for things that I said and the way I expressed myself,” he added.

The official public Covid inquiry is examining the government’s response to the pandemic — which shut swaths of the economy and upended social life — including the UK’s preparedness and senior decision-making. It is due to run until the summer of 2026.

Testimonies given by current and former ministers and senior officials last year painted a devastating picture of Johnson’s ability to make decisions of vital national importance during the pandemic, which began in late 2019.

Case gave evidence in a special session on Thursday because he was not well enough to appear last year.

Asked about his time working for Johnson, he said: “Each prime minister has their own approach to doing it and as I say, in my job, I found it very frustrating.”

In messages shown to the inquiry, Case described government officials as “pygmies”.

The inquiry was also shown an exchange between Case and Helen MacNamara, deputy cabinet secretary between 2020 and 2021, in which he raised concerns over the handling of the crisis in April 2020.

“Real lives being played with here,” wrote Case.

In other private messages, MacNamara despaired at the culture inside Downing Street, hitting out at “the arrogance and the waste . . . And the contempt for cabinet”. She also said Number 10 at the time was “the most actively sexist environment I have ever worked in”.

In her testimony MacNamara described how a “toxic” and “macho” culture at the heart of government hampered Britain’s response to the health crisis.

“I found reading Helen MacNamara’s both written evidence and oral evidence quite difficult,” Case said on Thursday. “Just as I found preparation for this, rereading this material, quite emotionally difficult.”

The inquiry was also shown a private message from December 2021 in which Case expressed his frustration over the so-called Partygate scandal, following media reports of parties in Downing Street and Whitehall during coronavirus lockdowns.

Case wrote that he had been “dragged through the mud by association”, adding: “Am flipping p----d off deep down (like the PM) that I am being attacked for something which I wasn’t even involved in.”