Boris Johnson and his former aide Dominic Cummings are politically estranged, but were united this weekend in a common endeavour: to pour scorn on Heather Hallett’s devastating report on the Covid pandemic.
The former prime minister was accused of “trying to rewrite history” after a 2,000-word diatribe written by him was published on Saturday. He also tried to discredit the conclusions of an inquiry that he himself had commissioned
Johnson claimed the report was “hopelessly incoherent” and his government had done its “level best” under difficult circumstances. He also said Lady Hallett had “laid into” the previous Tory government.
Hallett’s report was a measured but damning indictment of Johnson’s administration, which she found was characterised by a “toxic and chaotic culture” and often poor decision-making. Senior adviser Cummings was accused of contributing to a “culture of fear, mutual suspicion and distrust in Downing Street”.
The response of Johnson to a judicial inquiry was to strike back at the retired high court judge. He criticised Hallett in the article for administering a “judicious kicking” to his government rather than addressing key unanswered questions about the pandemic’s impact.
He said the suggestion that advisory measures to curb the spread of the virus could have been introduced earlier was “in the realm of absolute fantasy”. And he suggested Hallett seemed to want more lockdowns, despite the peer concluding that they may have been avoidable in 2020 with better decisions and that they left lasting scars on the UK.
Naomi Fulop, who lost her mother, Christina, in January 2021 in the pandemic and is a spokesperson for the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, said: “The report lays out Boris Johnson’s responsibility for thousands of deaths. There was a lack of professionalism and a lack of taking it seriously.
“He’s obviously very rattled, and when people are under attack, they attack the messenger, which is what he has done. He’s rewriting history and deliberately misunderstanding the report’s point about lockdowns. Nobody wants more lockdowns. [They] are a last resort.” Cummings yesterday on Saturday launched an even more lacerating attack on the inquiry team, posting on X that Hallett and the lead counsel, Hugo Keith KC, should be “stripped of all official jobs, all gongs and legally barred from working in the law”. He wrote: “Disgrace is too weak a word for the Inspector Clouseau inquiry… The next House of Commons should pass an act of parliament declaring the report ‘fake history’.” David Frost, a former cabinet minister andsaid the inquiry had shown a lack of intellectual curiosity and failed to answer a fundamental question on whether lockdowns saved lives.
Lord Frost said the claim that it had been established that about 23,000 lives would have been saved by an earlier lockdown was wrong. The claim was based on modelling by Prof Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, and the figures he used were estimated and could have been affected by various factors.
Former cabinet minister Michael Gove apologised last week for mistakes made during the pandemic. He said the inquiry had not treated the former Tory administration unfairly. He said on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that an earlier lockdown would have been better, but questioned the claim that 23,000 lives would have been saved.
Photograph by Justin Tallis/PA Wire