UK Covid-19 Inquiry: 10 questions for Boris Johnson to answer

For a man whose ambition remains unquenched, this will be a deeply uncomfortable ordeal, writes Sean O’Grady

Behind bars: former prime minister Boris Johnson, pictured with his ex-chief adviser Dominic Cummings (PA Archive)

Perhaps surprisingly, over his long and eventful life, Boris Johnson has never been on trial.

Certainly, he has extensive experience of the legal system: divorces; other difficult matters in his private life; the ever-present risk of libel; unconstitutional behaviour subject to judgment in the Supreme Court; the celebrated appearance at the privileges committee hearing; countless parking fines; even a fixed penalty notice for breaking his own lockdown rules.

But when he faces Hugo Keith KC and the other lawyers at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, it will be the first time he will have come under sustained questioning by a team of top barristers. Given his blustering performance before Harriet Harman and the Commons select committee, his tendency to go off-piste, his characteristic impatience and general “broad-brush” approach to executive decisions, it’s not certain that he’ll make a good impression as a witness.

The Covid inquiry isn’t a criminal trial and Johnson’s appearance cannot lead to a criminal record or a fine, let alone a jail sentence. I wonder if that may persuade Johnson that it doesn’t matter that much – and that his most important audience isn’t the lawyers and the inquiry chair, Baroness Hallett, but rather his “base” at home, who he’ll need to rely on for any political comeback.

On the other hand, Johnson must know a disastrous performance and subsequent assessment of him in the inquiry report could shred what’s left of his public reputation.

The inquiry is about finding out what happened, and why, and what lessons might learned. Guilt, as such, will not attach to Johnson – but he will have to justify his behaviour. In effect, he is on trial in the court of public opinion.

For a man whose ambition remains unquenched, it will be a deeply uncomfortable ordeal. Here’s what he’ll be confronted with…

1. When did you first become aware of the potential of this pandemic?

And why did it take him so long to act? Why did he not chair the early Cobra meetings? What other family, or extracurricular activities – such as writing a book on Shakespeare – occupied his time? Was Brexit a distraction?

The point here is to judge how carefully Johnson took his responsibility to weigh the risks; and frankly, how hard he was working at the time on any of his duties. Johnson has let it be known he thought it was just another swine flu-style scare, and was mistaken to dismiss it. He may also argue his officials and ministers, such as Dominic Cummings, Chris Whitty and Matt Hancock, didn’t ring the alarm bell loud enough in January and February 2020.

2. Why did you lock down when you did – and not sooner?

Johnson may plead “hindsight” here, but Cummings has painted a vivid picture of the chaos and confusion in No 10 in the crucial early part of March, with Brexit, the US bombing of Syria and a Times story about Dilyn the dog constantly interrupting the crucial decision on lockdown.

The question is really about whether Johnson comprehended the threat even then; whether he was “bamboozled” by numbers, exponential progression, and science, as the chief scientist Patrick Vallance concluded; and whether his libertarian instincts were too powerful.

3. Were you an indecisive “shopping trolley”?

Some of those who worked closest with Johnson have testified to a “chaotic” atmosphere in No 10. During the inquiry, he has been called a “trolley”, “oscillating” between policy options, indecisive and undisciplined, prone to last-minute appeals and changes of mind. Cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill and his deputy Helen McNamara, adviser Cummings, Vallance and head of communications Lee Cain all agreed on this. Why did they all think this? And why did his colleagues Hancock and Sajid Javid say the atmosphere in No 10 was “toxic”?

This is all about trying to determine whether the various failures in response to the coronavirus were more about inherent weaknesses in the structure of government, or because of the weak and unsuitable personalities – or a balance of the two.

Michael Gove made a case for why the Cobra process was fatally flawed, and the Cabinet Office unsuited to the tasks it was handed; others think the cause was the way procedures and communications were mishandled and decisions were taken in an informal, incoherent manner. It’s not exactly the same as “blame”; but near enough to cause collateral political damage to Johnson and others.

4. Did you decide to “let it rip”?

Why did Johnson say, on 5 March 2020, that the country could “take it on the chin, take it all in one go, and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures”? What did he understand by the term “herd immunity”? When did he decide instead to “flatten the sombrero” of infections?

Johnson has to justify his methods of running policy and taking decisions, and his understanding of science, albeit in pressured circumstances. There was, and is, some disquiet about the priority not given to controlling infections early on – which cost lives.

5. Why was Dominic Cummings not dismissed immediately when he broke lockdown rules?

Again, this is a question that looks into the quality of decision-making, and how a lack of discipline by prominent figures at the heart of government undermined their own policies. The revelation that, in March 2020, Johnson’s adviser had driven from London to Durham, and then to Barnard Castle, despite lockdown rules, appalled the nation – but what impact did it have on the prime minister’s decision-making?

The contrast between the way Cummings was protected by Johnson and the way Neil Ferguson, a government adviser on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) committee, and Hancock were treated over their lockdown transgressions is stark.

6. What was your assessment of the damage it did to the government’s future authority to advise the public and make rules for them?

Again, this is an issue that victims’ families, and the wider public, feel passionately about. For the inquiry, it’s also a question of how such damaging hypocrisy was allowed to take place, and why those at the top, such as Johnson, didn’t do more to stop it. “Partygate” isn’t part of the inquiry’s terms of reference – but neither can it be ignored when looking at lessons to be learned.

7. Was “Eat Out to Help Out” a bad idea… and whose idea was it?

Above all else, this is a question about Johnson’s truthfulness. The former PM has already said that the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, launched in August 2020, “was properly discussed with Chris [Whitty] and Patrick [Vallance]”. Yet neither has any recollection of this – and other public health officials, such as Jonathan Van-Tam and Angela McLean, say they didn’t know about it until it was announced.

As well as truthfulness, this is a prime example of the PM and his then chancellor Rishi Sunak not “following the science”, as they often claimed. Notably, it was also a policy that the head civil servant in the Treasury objected to as a waste of public funds. How far should politics be allowed to prevail over expert advice? Was the Treasury too powerful by then – and why?

8. Were you too quick to end lockdown in the summer of 2020… and take too long to reimpose them?

Despite constant protestations about the government having followed, or been “guided by”, the science, Johnson’s approach to locking down appears to some to have been deeply political. (For his part, Vallance has already raised the prospect that Johnson said he was following official advice only so that he could blame Whitty and Vallance if it all went wrong.)

Why, for instance, in October 2020, faced with an alarming rise in new Covid cases, was a time-limited “circuit-breaker” lockdown dismissed by Johnson so readily? Was it because Keir Starmer had been pressing for it?

And why did Johnson seemingly become obsessed with “saving” Christmas in 2020… only to reluctantly impose a lockdown days beforehand?

His apparent stubborn sentimentality over Christmas – Johnson resisted calls to go back into lockdown until the new year – only made matters worse, and may have cost lives. The Covid vaccination programme started in the UK on 8 December, which meant the most vulnerable would soon have some protection against the worst effects of the virus. A lockdown could thus have spared many of them the risk of contracting a new, more virulent strain. (In the event, Johnson was compelled to chaotically cancel Christmas, with days to spare.)

9. What was the point of the “tier” system – and what was the economic and scientific advice you used to approve it?

Once again, this is a study in how far expert advice was not, in fact, followed, or even sought, when it might be deemed politically unhelpful. Was this an institutional weakness in the governance of Britain, a sign of vibrant democratic pressure – or the failings of those at the top to do what they said they would do?

10. Why did you deny that you once said you’d rather “let the bodies pile high” than impose another lockdown, or words to that effect?

The inquiry has already heard from some of those that Johnson worked with closest during the pandemic. This stark quote, from the autumn of 2020, has been recounted by many at the inquiry and may have been a cri de coeur. But it also perhaps betrays his underlying sympathy for the idea that the old could have been sacrificed to save the young.

Johnson’s denials, including in the Commons, raise questions about his ability to analyse his behaviour in a candid and rational process.