05 October 2023 , 19:00
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Now we know, from the evidence of the top medical man on the spot.
At the height of the Covid pandemic, Boris Johnson, self-styled saviour of the nation, was in a blue funk. Buffeted by conflicting opinions from his fiancee Carrie and special advisers – none of them professionally qualified – he dithered.
Jittery Johnson was guilty of “impossible flip-flopping” and “bipolar decision-making”, chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance recorded at the time. In evidence to the Hallett Covid-19 Inquiry this week, his diary reveals that nobody at the top had read or understood the science about social distancing. Sir Patrick paints a horrifying picture of No10 in chaos and “at war with itself”, while ministers used scientists as human shields against criticism.
When a circuit-breaker lockdown was demanded by Labour in autumn 2020, Johnson was “all over the place and completely inconsistent”. “You can see why it was so difficult to get agreement to lock down the first time,” he discloses. Yet that delay has been held responsible for thousands of needless deaths.
And his then-chancellor, Rishi Sunak, ignored scientific advice to help self-employed workers isolate. These revelations confirm what everyone suspected: that Johnson’s claim to have “got Covid done” was a fraud. He even dismissed Long Covid, which still affects an estimated two million people in the UK, as “b*****ks”.
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The Hallett Inquiry grinds on with painful slowness, but it is getting to the truth, seizing thousands of pages of private conversations between ministers, civil servants and political advisers. A clear picture emerges of an ideologically-driven Tory government torn between life-saving lockdown urged by scientists, and its own free-market nutters who opposed emergency measures. And at the top of this toxic muddle was Mr Flip-Flop, a man who should never be allowed anywhere near public office again.