UK Covid inquiry: Boris Johnson’s incompetence exposed

It won’t have received all that much attention back in Australia, but this week there were some rather troubling revelations about the British government and its near-Fawlty Towers level of incompetence during the Covid pandemic.

The United Kingdom suffered 230,000 deaths from Covid, more than 10 times Australia’s toll, and is currently holding an inquiry to examine and critique its response. As such, we’ve been learning more about Boris Johnson’s vacillating, often negligent handling of the virus.

Some lowlights: when Mr Johnson suggested Covid was “just nature’s way of dealing with old people”; when he said “I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff” (referring to the country’s very much overwhelmed health system, which he was supposed to be running); and when his staff concluded “he doesn’t think it’s a big deal” and “his focus is elsewhere”.

Some of those quotes come from text messages sent by Mr Johnson’s top political adviser, Dominic Cummings, and others from the contemporaneous diaries of Britain’s flummoxed chief health adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance.

When you read through all the private material submitted to the inquiry as evidence, it is genuinely jaw-dropping to learn how much frustration and contempt Mr Johnson’s closest advisers had for his leadership. Many of their words were no more charitable than those written in newspaper columns or bellowed into microphones by his fiercest critics.

You know the infuriating buffoon of a boss you probably worked under at Woolies once, and ranted about to your colleagues behind his back? That, but instead of stuffing up the stock of Ritz crackers in aisle five, this guy’s incompetence was getting people killed.

Another example: Britain’s top public servant, Simon Case, complained that Mr Johnson “changes strategic direction every day” and “cannot lead”.

“I am at the end of my tether,” he fumed.

This is a man who was promoted to his position – some might argue beyond his experience or talent – by Mr Johnson, his main qualification being the correct political sympathies. We aren’t exactly talking about The Guardian’s editorial page here.

And therein lies the point. Everyone whose private correspondence is now emerging knew exactly what Boris Johnson was. They always knew. Yet the wannabe Machiavellis among them (Mr Cummings, chiefly) pretended he was a fit person to be prime minister anyway.

They sold a fake Boris to millions of British voters. Sure, he’s a bit eccentric with a bad haircut, but beneath all that fluff was supposedly a principled, intelligent man. He speaks ancient Greek, don’t you know!

So Mr Johnson got into power, and found himself in charge when a once-in-a-century crisis struck, and was nowhere near equal to it, and thousands died needlessly. Oops.

Mr Johnson has been compared to Donald Trump so often at this point that it’s become a horrendously dull thing to bring up, like telling the same anecdote at every party. Passably witty the first time, perhaps, back in about 2015, and never once since.

You’ll have to forgive me then, for the inquiry has left me no choice. We now know Boris asked Britain’s scientists whether Covid could be cured by blowing hot air from a hair dryer up his nose.

Granted, a seared nostril or two would do less permanent damage than Mr Trump’s idle suggestion of injecting people with disinfectant, but we’re in the same genre of stupidity.

And as Britain suffered through Covid, the United States was mired in the same nightmare, caused by the same dishonesty.

Mr Trump was surrounded, from the very beginning of his jaunt into politics, by people who knew he would not make a good president, a great many of them in his own party. Yet they fell in line, and boosted the myth that he was a plain-speaking, genius businessman, a dealmaker, and perhaps most brazenly, someone who actually cared about other people.

So Americans wound up with a delusional, self-absorbed conspiracy theorist running the country at the precise time it most needed sober leadership. And they suffered 1.2 million deaths.

You’ll have noted that a long list of Mr Trump’s former staffers and cabinet secretaries are now among his vociferous public critics. They knew what he was when they were working alongside him in the White House, pretending to think he was fit for the office. Choosing to speak out now has some value, but it won’t fix America’s botched response to Covid.

The people responsbile for enabling Mr Johnson and Mr Trump’s ascension still view politics as a fun game, it seems, where getting their guy elected is priority one, and considering whether he is actually able to do the job is a distant, forgotten second.

That might be harmless, to a point, when the most pressing issue of the day is setting tax rates or funding infrastructure or whatever. But when a crisis strikes, and an unserious person is in charge, the bill comes due. And the people responsible are never the ones paying it.

Twitter: @SamClench

Email: samuel.clench@news.com.au