LONDON — From sweary tirades against the Cabinet to a prime minister convinced he was the mayor from “Jaws,” Tuesday was an eye-opening day at Britain’s official inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a day of high drama, Boris Johnson’s former top aides — ex-chief adviser Dominic Cummings and former director of communications Lee Cain — took the stand, shedding light on how the British state struggled to get to grips with the magnitude of the crisis that unfolded in 2020 and 2021.
Plenty of key players — including Johnson and current PM Rishi Sunak — are still to put their side of the story across. But POLITICO has rounded up nine major claims from a big day at the inquiry, which saw a mass of previously private WhatsApp messages and internal government emails disclosed for the first time.
1) Britain’s COVID-19 ‘plan’ that wasn’t
Testimony from Cain on Tuesday morning painted a deeply unfavorable picture of the British state’s preparations for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Just weeks before the country was plunged into a full-scale lockdown, Johnson — who Cain said had likened the virus to “swine flu” and initially feared creating media panic by amping up the dangers — unveiled a “coronavirus action plan” on how the government would contain the spread.
But, Cain told the inquiry, the plan had little detail, and was “clearly only useful as a communications device.”
“There was a strategy — but there wasn’t a plan,” Cain said. “If this is the plan, then we clearly don’t have a plan.”
2) Sunak feared lockdown’s economic toll
While much of the evidence focused squarely on Johnson’s Downing Street, the current occupant of No. 10 was closely involved in the pandemic — and some of the inquiry proceedings — too.
Rishi Sunak was then the top finance minister at the all-powerful Treasury. One exchange between Cummings and Cain on WhatsApp, just days before Britain locked down, suggests Sunak had warned Johnson about the impact the measures would have on the economy.
“Rishi saying bond markets may not fund our debt etc,” the Cummings text to Cain on March 19 2020 reads.
And that appeared to have a powerful sway on Johnson as he mulled whether or not to lock down. Referring to Johnson, Cummings said the former prime minister was “back to Jaws mode wank” — an apparent sweary call-back to Johnson’s love of the mayor from the Steven Spielberg classic “Jaws,” who fights to keep the beaches open despite the threat from the hungry shark.
Given previous inquiry sessions have thrown up concern from scientific advisers about Sunak’s flagship “eat out to help out scheme” later that year, the current prime minister may face uncomfortable questions of his own when he is eventually asked to face the inquiry.
3) Johnson had the ‘wrong skillset’
Cain told the inquiry he believed Johnson’s governing style simply wasn’t suited to the crisis.
Johnson’s leadership mode was picked apart in minute detail during the hearings, with the then-prime minister described as a man who liked to sound out different voices for some time before coming to a settled view.
Cain put it diplomatically, saying COVID was the “wrong crisis for this prime minister’s skillset.” Johnson, he said, showed “great strength” during Brexit in allowing competing ideas to flourish before making a decision — but that “oscillating” didn’t work for coronavirus.
Cummings, however, didn’t hold back, disparaging a prime minister who veered all over the place. “Pretty much everyone calls him the trolley, yeah,” the former chief aide said.
4) Big doubts about summer 2020 easing of restrictions
Cain made clear that there were real concerns in government about Johnson’s decision to reopen schools, workplaces, shops and restaurants in the summer of 2020.
Sending people back to such venues would, Cain said, only have worked if Britain was “intent on never having to do suppression measures again” — yet the government had clear advice at the time that it would have to lock down again once the virus spread.
Sure enough, a second lockdown followed in October 2020 to prevent what Johnson warned would be a “medical and moral disaster” for the National Health Service.
5) Johnson talked about letting the elderly ‘accept their fate’
A diary entry from the government’s mild-mannered then-Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance said Johnson appeared to believe COVID was “nature’s way of dealing with old people.”
That chimes with evidence from Cain and Cummings, whose WhatsApps with Johnson show the former PM telling colleagues he “no longer buy[s] all this NHS overwhelmed stuff.”
Pointing to data showing “hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 percent) and of those virtually all survive,” Johnson even quipped: “Get COVID and live longer. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate.”
6) Cummings hated the Cabinet — and still hates Matt Hancock
Dominic Cummings has never tried to hide his disdain for the Westminster and Conservative establishment — and WhatsApps he sent to Cain express that hatred in colorful terms.
After Johnson rejected a call from Cummings to brief the Cabinet about an upcoming reshuffle, Cummings raged that he was making a “big big mistake” in the next message.
“At the moment the [Westminster] bubble thinks you’ve taken your eye off ball, you’re happy to have useless fuckpigs in charge, and they think that a vast amount of the chaotic news on the front pages is coming from No 10 when in fact it’s coming from the Cabinet who are ferral [sic],” he texted.
Cummings also emphasized the importance of sacking health chief Matt Hancock, whose name kept on cropping up.
The inquiry saw messages from Cummings accusing the then health secretary of having “lied his way through this” and “killed people” amid intense focus on the protection of care homes for the elderly and disabled during the pandemic. Hancock will get the chance to respond when he eventually faces the inquiry.
7) Britain’s top official came under heavy fire
A key player referenced several times in Tuesday’s evidence was Mark Sedwill, who served as Britain’s most senior civil servant — known as the Cabinet secretary — before he was replaced by Simon Case in a Johnson clear-out.
Messages from Cummings claim Sedwill spent a meeting in the early days of the pandemic “babbling about chickenpox,” which the former No.10 aide said showed a fundamental lack of understanding about the severity of the virus in the vital Cabinet Office.
Cummings said Sedwill — a Whitehall and security veteran who was appointed by Theresa May and who led the Home Office before taking on one of the biggest jobs in the British state — had been a skilled diplomat. But he argued Sedwill “did not have visibility of the fundamental disasters that were unfolding inside the Cabinet Office.”
In a further twist, Cummings said he later “begged” Johnson not to fire Sedwill because of the disruption it could cause in the government machine. He described the move as unfair to Sedwill on a personal level, and said it ended up setting off a “bomb across the whole system.”
“It was a total disaster,” Cummings said of the firing. Sedwill is yet to put his side of the story across.
8) Cummings’ swearing scrutinized
“Did you treat individuals in Downing Street with offense and misogyny, Mr Cummings?” Inquiry Lead Counsel Hugo Keith asked rather pointedly.
“Certainly not,” Cummings replied.
Moments later, a message Cummings sent Cain in the summer of 2020 about the senior civil servant Helen MacNamara flashed on the inquiry screen.
“If I have to come back to Helen’s bullshit with PET [the government’s propriety and ethics team] — designed to waste huge amounts of my time so I can’t spend it on other stuff — I will personally handcuff her and escort her from the building,” Cummings wrote.
“I don’t care how it is done but that woman must be out of our hair — we cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that cunt,” he added.
Cummings apologized for his language and said it was “obviously appalling.” But he said the overall issue he was complaining about — related to time he felt was wasted with pointless meetings amid a collapsing Cabinet Office — was a “thousand” times worse.
Pressed on his language and whether he is misogynistic, Cummings hit back.
“I was much ruder about men than I was about women,” he said.
9) Cummings appeared to block Johnson on WhatsApp
Transcripts of WhatsApp exchanges show Cummings appeared to block Johnson on the messaging app immediately after a blow-up that precipitated his late 2020 exit from No. 10.
Cummings and Cain left government in November 2020. Johnson had accused the pair of damaging briefings against his leadership and making infighting worse.
In texts revealed by the inquiry, Johnson messaged Cummings to take aim at a host of media briefings against him, including claims he “can’t take decisions,” would be “out in 6 months” and that his partner, Carrie, was “secretly forging lockdown policy.”
“Are you responsible for all that crap? No? Then look at it from my point of view. This is a totally disgusting orgy of narcissism by a government that should be solving a national crisis,” Johnson added. “That’s why I wanted to talk and see what we could jointly do to sterilize the whole thing. But if you really refuse then that’s up to you.”
The inquiry continues — with top representatives from Britain’s health service grilled Wednesday.
