Johnson absent during crisis, Drakeford says

Boris Johnson was like the “absent manager” of a football team during the Covid-19 crisis, the inquiry into the pandemic has heard.

Mark Drakeford, the outgoing First Minister for Wales, criticised the former prime minister, during his appearance at the inquiry yesterday.

Mr Drakeford said the PM was “not taking it seriously” during the early pandemic and accused him of being deliberately unclear when new rules only applied to England.

In a written statement, Mr Drakeford described Michael Gove – the minister for the Cabinet Office during the early part of the pandemic and point of contact between the two governments – as “a centre forward without a team lined up behind him, and where the manager was largely absent”.

Addressing the inquiry, Mr Drakeford (inset) clarified: “The absent manager was the prime minister because he was never in these meetings.”

While he praised Mr Gove, he described him as having influence rather than the impact that Mr Johnson would have had.

Earlier hearings heard Mr Johnson decided not to meet heads of the devolved nations to avoid giving the impression the UK was federalised.

Mr Drakeford said he had written to Mr Johnson “regularly” asking for a “predictable series of meetings between the heads of the four nations” and called the decision not to meet the devolved nations “extraordinary”.

The First Minister claimed mass gatherings, like the Cheltenham Festival, had only been kept open during the early stages of the pandemic because Dominic Cummings, the former PM’s adviser, refused to stop them. He said he made the argument in Cobra meetings on 12 March, weeks before the first lockdown.

Mr Drakeford also claimed that UK ministers were “afraid of then Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon” during the pandemic.

“Many UK ministers were afraid of her and would not like to be involved in a confrontational dialogue with her.”