Whatever Boris Johnson said at the COVID inquiry, the evidence pointed to failures in leadership
Thousands of pieces of evidence, dozens of witnesses and weeks of testimony: all leading to the moment when the key protagonist, the man ultimately in charge of running the country during COVID, took to the stand to offer his version of events in No 10 and government during the pandemic.
We have heard so many accounts of Boris Johnson‘s conduct and leadership style during the pandemic.
His former adviser Dominic Cummings described how he “veered like a trolley’ over introduction restrictions.
Sir Patrick Vallance said Mr Johnson was “bamboozled” by the science and Lee Cain, his former advisor, said his “was not the right skill set for this crisis”.
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Today Mr Johnson used his evidence at the COVID inquiry to do two things at once.
On the one hand, he told the inquiry that he took responsibility for a variety of issues – from the speed of the government’s response and the lockdown decisions, to the Eat Out to Help Out scheme and the tier system.
But he simultaneously batted off criticisms of his leadership style and repeatedly made the argument that mistakes made were the fault of the collective Whitehall machine rather than the ultimate decision maker.
“I think that it would certainly be fair to say the entire Whitehall establishment, scientific community included, our advisers included, that we underestimated the scale and the pace of the challenge,” Mr Johnson said.
“We were… all collectively underestimating how fast it had already spread in the UK. We underestimated, we put the peak too late.”
Evidence pointed to leadership failures
But whatever Mr Johnson said, the evidence presented by KC Hugo Keith did point to leadership failures by the former prime minister.
There was a body of evidence that suggested the prime minister didn’t attend meetings, or seem to be across the evidence he was getting.
He stressed that in January and early February, he was not alerted to the seriousness of COVID, only for Mr Keith to pull up evidence that at the COBRA meeting on 29 January the chief medical officer raised the scenario where the China outbreak could turn into a pandemic and the UK could be impacted.
He also pointed out that the prime minister got a box note in his daily papers alerting him to Britons being taken out of Wuhan.
Johnson rebuffs criticisms about leadership style
When it came to asymptomatic transmission, which the prime minister said he wasn’t aware of until March, there were references to meetings where evidence of asymptotic transmission in Germany was present in January.
“If I was told that, I have completely forgotten,” Mr Johnson said.
As for his leadership style, Mr Johnson rebuffed criticisms put to him by his former cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill and Sir Patrick that his administration was “brutal and useless”.
Avoiding getting into any tit-for-tats with individuals, he said only that “highly talented and motivated people… under great stress and anxiety about themselves and their own performance will be inclined to be critical of others,” going on to say that this would be “same of any administration facing the same sort of challenges”.
These problems then, were not particular to Mr Johnson’s No 10, but rather a feature of Downing Street. He’s the only one who seems to believe that.
Drill down into the evidence and at a time when the country needed clear and decisive leadership to get it through the worst pandemic in a century, it instead was led by a prime minister who didn’t read the data or attend COBRA meetings, missed memos and couldn’t remember things that were said.
As to whether failures of government added to the death toll, Mr Johnson said he couldn’t give an answer to that question. But those watching might draw their own conclusions.