A chance to learn from past mistakes
WThe Lockdown Files are a case study in how quickly tribalism and denial can set in when politicians feel no one is looking
hy was Britain locked down so hard, and for so long? Why did we end up not just with more Covid deaths but far more economic and social damage than many of our neighbours? While some other countries have already concluded their official inquiries into what happened during lockdown, in the UK the public has been left waiting for answers.
Today, The Telegraph is publishing the first of a series of stories that will help people form their own conclusions about what the UK went through in the darkest days of the pandemic.
As Health Secretary at the time, Matt Hancock was at the centre of almost every conversation that mattered. Those conversations were held, to a remarkable extent, via Whatsapp. In Boris Johnson’s informal style of government, huge decisions were sometimes made on the hoof, with mobile phone messaging often supplanting Cabinet meetings as a forum for deciding Britain’s future. “Let’s use this when we need to move fast,” said Mr Hancock in one of the higher-powered Whatsapp groups he created, “so we’re all on the same page at all times.”
The Lockdown Files help us to understand who decided what, when and how. But they also give some of the context: the allegiances, obsessions and insecurities that drove the decisions. The messages will only be a fraction of the total conversations. They show the argument from the perspective of exchanges involving Mr Hancock. But they amount to an important cache of evidence – offering not just discussions but a psychological profile of ministers who at the time enjoyed untrammelled power.
Over the coming days, this newspaper will reveal stories detailing the sometimes cavalier, often evidence-free way in which decisions affecting millions were taken. But the stories also offer a case study in how quickly groupthink can set in – and how some decisions can be made on the thinnest of evidence.
We today disclose that Mr Hancock personally rejected advice to test care home workers and visitors for Covid based on his belief that it would not add anything and that it “muddies the waters”. Care homes were the scene of a quarter of Covid deaths. Studies show that the most likely path was not patients discharged from hospital (as was originally thought) but staff and visitors.
With other Cabinet members too often enjoying a limited ability to question the moves of the main decision-makers, restrictions that abridged the liberty of millions appear to have been taken on a gut feeling – not necessarily about what would work but sometimes about what was politically easiest. Without having to explain themselves to Parliament, ministers would say that they were “following the best scientific advice”.
The Opposition party was not opposing and Sir Keir Starmer provided a rubber stamp for any pro-lockdown measure. This arguably transformed the discussions. The balance of political risk shifted. In some cases, the evidence-based norms of public health appear to have collapsed, as did basic standards in public statistics.
For months, the normal checks, balances and transparency of the UK yielded to a black-box democracy – with decisions taken for reasons that were never explained to other Cabinet members, let alone the country. What were the assumptions behind the models? How confident were scientists about their advice? And how hard – if at all – were the big decisions being scrutinised?
The official inquiry is moving at a glacial pace. It is to happen in stages, the first being about preparedness. It’s well-established that Britain had considered itself one of the best-prepared countries in the world – but, at a moment of apparent emergency, the plans in place were judged to be inadequate. The pandemic war-games could not properly accommodate one variable: political panic. There were endless studies from behavioural scientists about what the public would do in a pandemic – but none properly asked what a group of politicians would do in this extraordinary situation.
The Lockdown Files help to uncover what no memo, no memoir, no testimony ever could: how a handful of men with unprecedented power behaved, minute by minute, when plunged into this maelstrom. This is why they are of such great historical value because they offer a psychological profile: a case study not only in political behaviour but about how quickly tribalism and denial can set in when politicians feel no one is looking.
While offering insights into our recent history, the Lockdown Files are not historic. They expose a system, still alive now, where questions of economic and social damage can be ignored and ministers who raise them can be ostracised. A system where unelected spin doctors can end up having more influence than Cabinet members and managing headlines can be seen as a more pressing priority than keeping children learning in schools. The structure, not the people, remains the problem. And it is in place still.
Failure to learn from history condemns us to repeat it – and the Lockdown Files provide an unprecedented opportunity to start learning.