The UK Covid inquiry heard extraordinary testimony this week from two of the chief architects of Covid lockdowns in Downing Street. Dominic Cummings, once Boris Johnson’s senior adviser, and Lee Cain, former director of communications at No. 10, provided a damning portrait of their former boss, with Cain claiming he was the “wrong prime minister” for the crisis.
A near-universal media narrative quickly emerged after the day’s political theatre, in outlets such as the Guardian, Independent and Financial Times. Namely, that Johnson’s toxic style of statecraft and chaotic indecision delayed much-needed lockdown measures in early 2020.
But behind the Boris-bashing, the testimony of Cummings and Cain should raise a critical, thus far neglected, question for the inquiry: what if Johnson’s political instincts to avoid lockdown were broadly correct — or, at least, the better of two bad options?
According to Cummings on Tuesday, the Government’s U-turn in March 2020 from mitigation (herd immunity) to suppression (lockdown) was implemented without a clear plan. While he argued that the entire British state, from Cobra to Sage to the Cabinet Office to ministers, was irredeemably incompetent (except for him, of course), he forgot to mention a key fact: lockdown was not in any Government pandemic plan — in the UK or even in official WHO guidelines.
Despite being the largest suspension of civil liberties since 1945, the inquiry appears most interested in why it was not implemented a few weeks earlier. More scrutiny should surely be placed on lockdown itself, the scientists and politicians who advocated for it and the collateral damage to society as a whole, not to mention the other alternatives available.
Both Cummings and Cain made plain that the decision to impose lockdown in 2020 was influenced by public opinion and fear. According to Cain, “the communications side drove a huge part of the Government machine during my entire time […] in Covid more than anything.”
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