Panto probe unfairly casts Boris as villain

THE Covid Inquiry is meant to be a measured investigation of the facts around Britain’s handling of the pandemic.

When Boris Johnson appeared before it yesterday, it felt more like a criminal trial.

The ex-prime minister was in the dock – and a guilty verdict already reached.

Hugo Keith KC, the inquiry’s peacocking lead counsel, sought to portray him as a blithering incompetent. Someone who casually discarded scientific advice to lock down earlier and for longer, consigning 230,000 people to death as a result.

So what exactly was the evidence of Mr Johnson’s supposed failure of leadership? Little more than a confusion of tittle-tattle, name- calling and derogatory WhatsApp messages between ministers and officials.

In the unprecedented pressure cooker atmosphere of the pandemic, it was inevitable that feelings should run high.

Scientific advice was confused and often contradictory. Ministers, civil servants and advisers disagreed on the correct way forward – sometimes violently.

At the top of this pyramid of anxiety was the Prime Minister, whose job was to sift and analyse all the information flooding in and try to formulate policy.

And all the while, the virus was surging, the NHS was under intolerable strain, people were dying. Amid such turmoil, is it any wonder that courtesies were sometimes forgotten – and salty language deployed?

The inquiry has placed too much emphasis on the idea that government should be a harmonious working environment, where no one is ever frustrated or angry. Can Mr Keith say, hand on heart, that tempers never frayed in the lawyerly Inns of Court, nor the air turned blue?

Mr Johnson began his testimony with a sincere apology for the ‘pain, loss and suffering’ of Covid victims. He admitted the Government made mistakes. But his defence of why he was reluctant to impose restrictions was robust. With each passing day, more evidence emerges of the ruinous collateral damage – to the economy, health and education – of shutting down society.

Yet to this pantomime of an inquiry, lockdowns have become almost Holy Writ, as though unarguably the right approach. It seems uninterested in asking whether the suffering caused by such an oppressive policy was justified in terms of lives saved. In short, were lockdowns worthwhile?

For the £200 million it is costing, the public has a right to expect a rigorous search for the truth. The inquiry should focus on what worked during the pandemic and how Britain can best prepare itself for when the next one arrives – as it surely will.

Instead, it seems more convenient to blame Mr Johnson for anything and everything that went wrong.