Just blaming Boris is a cop-out – would a different PM have fared any better?

The Covid inquiry has already exposed how unfit Boris Johnson was to lead national efforts to combat a pandemic. But, says Mary Dejevsky, it could yet reveal equally crucial failings in the wider government machinery – as well as some small saving graces

According to WhatsApp messages from the head of the civil service, which were read out at the Covid inquiry, Boris Johnson’s approach to the pandemic was ‘mad and dangerous’ (Getty Images)

The past week may well have been the first time that those with a general – rather than personal, or specialist – interest really sat up and took notice of the Covid inquiry.

One reason, of course, was the “star” quality of the witnesses, who included the mercurial Dominic Cummings, catapulted to infamy after fleeing to County Durham and being spotted taking his eye-test drive to Barnard Castle; Martin Reynolds, the smooth ex-diplomat known as “Party Marty”, who had invited his No 10 colleagues to a “bring your own booze” gathering in the Downing Street garden; and the straitlaced Helen MacNamara, the Cassandra who, as deputy cabinet secretary, had warned the PM that “we’re absolutely f*****” over the lack of preparations – only to be one of those fined for a party violation of her own.

Oh dear, oh dear. What with Cummings’s particular way of insulting his co-workers, which prompted solemn trigger-warnings practically every time one of his WhatsApps was read out; the self-righteous apology to “the families of all those who suffered during Covid” with which Reynolds prefaced his answers; and MacNamara’s blithe statement that “it’s hard to pick a day when we did not break lockdown rules”, there was plenty to infuriate those who tuned in to the live-stream.

What especially irked me was the absence of any real humility on the part of anyone.

The passage of time since Cummings’s dramatic departure from Downing Street has done nothing to mellow his superiority complex. MacNamara seemed blissfully unaware of how breaches at Downing Street during Covid might seem to call into question the strengths she presumably brought to her previous job as director general of propriety and ethics in the Cabinet Office.

And Reynolds, for his part, managed to neuter his lavish apology by saying the No 10 party had had no effect on public confidence at the time, as the news only broke many months later. Really? No impact in terms of right and wrong, of government being seen to set an example?

If this week’s main witnesses all justified themselves in their own way, however, on one point they agreed. If there was blame to be apportioned, then it really all came down to the prime minister. In a reprise of the old cliché about the fish rotting from the head, it was all about Boris Johnson.

He was personally dysfunctional, chaotic. He was absent during a crucial two weeks when he should have been leading the response. He kept changing his mind; he would not listen to advice. According to WhatsApp messages from the head of the civil service, Simon Case, read out to the inquiry, his approach to the pandemic was “mad and dangerous”.

MacNamara made great play of what she called the “toxic” and “macho” atmosphere at No 10, while Johnson’s former communications chief, Lee Cain, who also testified this week, joined the consensus a little more kindly. “I think,” he said, “it was the wrong crisis for this prime minister’s skill set. Which is different, I think, from not potentially being up for the job of prime minister.” At which the inquiry chair, Baroness Hallett, barked at him to define “skill set”.

While it is understandable, however, that others involved in trying to manage the crisis from Downing Street should seek to deflect the responsibility on to Boris Johnson, and inevitable that the prime minister would be central to this second “module” of the inquiry, on “Core UK Decision-making and Political Governance”, the extent to which this is happening seems to me profoundly unhelpful – to use the adjective beloved of the civil service.

This is because, first, although Downing Street was clearly an unhappy and poorly captained ship through the Covid crisis, it cannot be assumed that another PM would have coped any better.

The pandemic has been described as the worst public health emergency for a century. Not only is there no counterfactual to gauge Johnson by, but there were things that went right, as well as things that went wrong – the investment in and roll-out of the vaccine, for instance – that required his buy-in. Would another PM have taken what was, at that stage, this sort of risk? When he broached another risk, by finding out more about what Sweden was doing, he was roundly stomped on. But perhaps he was right.

Piling exclusively on to Johnson, is wrong, second, because – however much his political foes and frustrated civil servants might want it to be so – it was not all down to him, as his brief flirtation with the Swedish example might show. Yes, as PM, the buck stops with him and the PM sets a tone. But, as transpires from the inquiry so far, the Covid crisis set many around, and at the top of, government at each other’s throats. The structures, such as they were, did not survive contact with a real emergency of this sort and on this scale.

A government machine that should have roared into action proved simply unequal to the task. All parts of that machine had – or should have had – a function, but it turned out not only that many lacked crucial expertise, so were unable to ask pertinent questions, but that there was a basic ignorance even of how the NHS actually worked. Staff supposed to keep the government working and disciplined were turning a blind eye to daily and hourly breaches of the rules; and they knew that. Johnson may have been a poor crisis leader, but he was also poorly served.

But the third and bigger point is that to blame Johnson exclusively is to ignore, or at very least downgrade, everything else that did not work in this crisis or could have been done better. Why, for instance, was the NHS allowed to become the National Covid Service, storing up problems for years to come? Why was the private health sector co-opted, then not used?

MacNamara pinpointed the particular difficulties faced by women and ethnic minorities, but why were the schools closed for most pupils? Why were care staff allowed to serve several different homes? Why was infection control in NHS hospitals so much less effective than in many hospitals abroad? There are answers to these questions that any inquiry should have both the resources and the duty to answer.

If all the blame is heaped up on Boris Johnson, then the only “lesson learned” from the inquiry will be that you need a competent and well-organised prime minister. Basically, anyone but Boris.

And this would be a huge missed opportunity, given the myriad weaknesses in our system that the pandemic exposed – from the failure of government structures to the lack of realistic emergency planning, to the accountability of civil servants and the potential for building on services that already exist, such as local “track and trace” systems, rather than starting afresh with an expensive top-down version.

Then there are matters of high principle, such as the primacy given to scientists – scientists, what is more, of a certain stamp – and the need to balance the demands of disease control against those of the economy.

Boris Johnson may indeed have been far from the ideal prime minister to lead efforts to combat Covid-19. But it is worth bearing in mind that he may not have been the worst either.

And the risk of focusing exclusively on one man and his character is that some of those who should share the blame get off scot-free, and other, very necessary lessons go unlearned.