Monday’s hearing of the Covid-19 inquiry cannot have been easy viewing for Boris Johnson. The former prime minister has a keen sense of history and his place in it. Unfortunately, the evidence produced so far for the official investigation suggests that a favourable write-up in future histories of Mr Johnson’s performance during the coronavirus pandemic appears increasingly remote.
Amid all the pejorative wording in the Whats- App messages flying between his supposedly loyal lieutenants — now public property after being surrendered to the inquiry — it was the shopping trolley emoji that sticks in the memory. To Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s chief of staff at the time, and Lee Cain, then No 10’s director of communications, Mr Johnson was the human equivalent of one of those uncontrollable supermarket mobile baskets, careering along the aisles, swerving erratically from side to side before smashing into a carefully stacked display of tinned tomato soup. This unedifying symbol was the one they used when referring to Mr Johnson in WhatsApp exchanges bemoaning his capricious and chaotic handling of Britain’s greatest domestic crisis since the Second World War.
But it is not only the former prime minister who comes off badly from the current round of hearings, dealing with the performance of the government machine in February and March 2020, the first months of the outbreak, when focus and speed were paramount if lives were to be saved. The picture painted on Monday by WhatsApp messages, emails and the evidence of former prime ministerial private secretaries was of a government reeling in the face of an unprecedented assault by a virus type that had not been addressed in contingency planning. As far as Whitehall was concerned, the threat was flu. And when something else turned up the people in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office charged with thinking the unthinkable were left scrambling around in the dark while the boss took half-term off.
According to Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, during a critical ten-day period that February there was no communication between officials and the prime minister by email, boxed note or via meetings of the Cobra emergency committee. As the country faced societal meltdown Mr Johnson apparently went missing in action. And when he did turn up his performance was erratic. He would, said his former private secretary Martin Reynolds, “blow hot and cold” over various approaches to tackling the crisis.
A diary note taken by Imran Shafi, another Downing Street private secretary, suggested that, in the days before lockdown, Mr Johnson asked why the economy should be destroyed “for people who will die anyway soon”. This was during a meeting in March 2020 with Rishi Sunak, the chancellor at the time. What was said — and the recollections of two men who are now political enemies — will be the meat of more controversy as the inquiry continues, threatening more reputations.
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In the meantime Mr Johnson’s reputation is taking a serious battering. In WhatsApp traffic, Simon Case, the present cabinet secretary, amazingly still in post after the debacle of partygate, describes himself being at the end of his tether. “He [Mr Johnson] changes strategic direction every day ... He cannot lead and we cannot support him in leading. The team captain cannot change the call on the big plays every day ... this guy is really making it impossible.” Senior officials were, it is clear, frustrated and alarmed by the prime minister’s “ridiculous flip-flopping”.
This and Mr Reynolds’s abject apology for organising the “bring your own bottle” lockdown-busting party at No 10, were merely the hors d’oeuvre. On Tuesday Messrs Cain and Cummings are expected to shed more light on this dystopian era. And light, the best disinfectant, is what is needed.
