Baroness Hallett’s UK Covid-19 Inquiry report must be an Emperor’s New Clothes Moment in British politics. She lays out in black and white that the idle and capricious Boris Johnson was naked of the judgement, empathy and self-discipline which the nation has a right to expect from its prime ministers, especially at times of crisis.
Equally, we can see clearly now that Dominic Cummings, his closest aide during the pandemic, was not the free-thinking genius he pretends to be, but the mirthless jester of Johnson’s court, whose contribution was entirely negative.
His destructive role goes beyond the hypocrisy of his flagrant breach of the restrictions the government imposed on everyone else with his infamous dash to his father-in-law’s estate in Durham. The report states that his “eye-test” drive to the beauty spots of Barnard Castle “undermined public confidence in decision-making and significantly increased the risk of the public failing to adhere to measures designed to protect the population”.
Cummings took “key decisions in 10 Downing Street which were for the prime minister to make”, Hallett states. “His behaviour contributed significantly to a culture of fear, mutual suspicion and distrust that poisoned the atmosphere”.
Cummings gave evidence to the inquiry in person, but he dismisses the report as “a mix of Inspector Clouseau, coverups and rewriting history”. True to form he is confident he did nothing wrong: “I never broke any rules… I have never been interviewed/questioned by the police in any way…(other than government business and security issues.)”.
The government’s failed handling of the outbreak – including at least 23,000 unnecessary British deaths according to Hallett – was all someone else’s fault. Cummings blames “the Trolley” – the nickname he prefers to use for Boris Johnson, who employed him. He blames the “experts”, including the “senior scientists” who were “completely wrong” in the early months of 2020. He puts the Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald firmly in the crosshairs for contemplating “chickenpox parties” to spread infection and immunity, when Wormald was the senior civil servant at the Department of Health.
Hallett describes the culture “in which the loudest voices prevailed and the views of other colleagues, particularly women, often went ignored,” in which Cummings was a “destabilising” and “chaotic” influence using “offensive, sexualised and misogynistic language”. Cummings turns the attack back on the inquiry, climing it “failed even to get statements” from “roughly 99 per cent of the 30 relatively junior women working in No 10.”
Cummings argues that the only people who exposed what was going wrong were the “Outsiders” he brought in as part of his “weirdos and misfits” recruitment drive – such as data nerds Ben Warner and James Phillips. This attitude reveals that Cummings was an even greater villain than we thought at the time.
He is showily caustic at blaming everyone else for what went wrong, especially the perennially soft target of conventional government, what some like to call “the blob”.
Cummings was hired by Johnson and paid by the taxpayer to be part of government and to make it work better in the interests of the country. Yet, there is little evidence that he contributed positively to protecting the British people from Covid.
The UK peaked in the top 20 countries for Covid deaths by population and fared worse than most equivalent advanced Western democracies. Hallett’s report concluded that the government’s failure to take Covid seriously at first led to the loss of 23,000 lives.
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That is not a conspiracy theory. It is a sad fact. And Cummings was in charge, taking decisions which the prime minister should have been making, according to the report. Until he was finally kicked out in November 2020.
In his defence, Cummings has admitted himself that “the Trolley” should never have let him near No 10. But not because of any white hot threat he posed as a reformer. The truth is that he never had a clue about doing anything constructive. Rightly or wrongly, his record in politics is as a mocker and destroyer – stop devolution in the North East, reverse “progressive” trends in education, leave the European Union – with no practical vision of what to do instead other than Elon Musk-esque authoritarian fantasy.
Coping with the Covid outbreak was beyond Dominic Cummings’s skill set or tool box or whatever bit of pseudish jargon he chooses to call it by. Check out his blog.
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