David Cameron has a lot of things to be sorry for – but not Covid-19

There is no shortage of reasons that Cameron might find himself staring at his bedroom ceiling at 2am, looking within himself for answers. Pandemic preparedness should not be one of them, writes Tom Peck

Former prime minister David Cameron giving evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry in Paddington, west London, on Monday (PA Media)

David Cameron, remember him? He was prime minister, once upon a time. It was a simpler time, too. One when questions like, “What might we do if there’s a pandemic?” was the sort of decadent problem that might keep a prime minister busy for a morning or two. Host the odd meeting, make the odd call, before reaching for the iPhone 3 and for a long afternoon of Fruit Ninja.

It was nice, quaint, almost, to see him back in public. He was, according to Wikipedia, prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 2010 to 2016. Sadly, nobody, least of all him, can remember anything that he actually did.

He is best known for resigning, apologising for Brexit, and then apologising for everything he did after Brexit, which was mainly texting former officials and asking them if they wouldn’t mind doing him a few favours with regard to some work he was doing for a now-disgraced Australian businessman which he hoped was going to make him fifty million quid but which also – see if you can spot a pattern emerging here – went very badly wrong.

This was different, though. This was the Covid inquiry. Genteel by comparison. They just wanted to know what he did or didn’t do, whether he had any regrets at all about anything he might have done or not done in the build-up to the greatest public health catastrophe in at least a century, and probably a lot more.

Did he, for example, have any regrets about smashing public services to pieces and, maybe, leaving them unable to cope with a pandemic that he, at least according to himself, was simultaneously warning could happen any second?

But no, he explained, in his polite, reassuring way. Decimating the basic function of the state had been crucial. He had to get control of the public finances.

In countries where they hadn’t got control of the public finances, he explained, like, say Greece or Spain, the effects on health services and the like had ultimately been worse, not better. That he had had to be cruel to be kind. It was only through his courageous budget-slashing that later generosity was made possible, like, say the now prime minister Rishi Sunak bribing people with free Big Macs.

He also said a line that the Covid inquiry is going to hear a lot. That, with the power of hindsight, he regrets that his government focused on the possibility of a flu pandemic and not other types of pandemics like, for example, coronaviruses.

Again, it is possible that a greater strategic mind might have thought harder about the possibilities.

But hindsight is a wonderful thing. Hindsight, for example, might lead a man to wonder whether it is necessarily the best idea to threaten European Union officials with the prospect of an in/out referendum unless they grant you certain concessions that are entirely outside their mandate and which they cannot possibly give you. And then back up that threat by assuring them in private that you can’t possibly lose.

But it is possible to wonder whether Cameron is being hard on himself, even in hindsight. His mea culpa on pandemic preparedness will be heard many times over the next three years. Indeed, it has already been heard many times.

It seems somewhat harsh. While the Covid inquiry rolls on, other investigations – particularly those by, for example, US intelligence services – are coming to conclude with increasing certainty that Covid-19 was not a natural event, but rather an accidental lab leak which was then covered up.

Cameron, and others, arguably have every right to focus their preparations on more likely natural events over less likely accidental ones, that were subsequently exacerbated through the dishonesty of those responsible.

David Cameron has a very large amount to be sorry for. There is no shortage of reasons that he might find himself staring at his bedroom ceiling at 2am, looking within himself for answers.

But – and this is in no way a compliment – pandemic preparedness is not one of them.