The Covid inquiry has a crucial question to answer: Was Trump’s conspiracy actually right?

The Covid inquiry almost certainly won’t answer the only question that really matters, writes Tom Peck. Where did Covid-19 really come from? Whose fault was it? And who lied about it?

People said it was a conspiracy theory. And now, what do you know, the intelligence agencies agree with him (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Should the Covid inquiry get to see Boris Johnson’s personal WhatsApps? Who gets to decide? Is Rishi Sunak happy to pretend that all this is about Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps when it’s really about his own? Are they really going to go to court over it?

These are the questions that are dominating the public conscience and will do all week, in the slow drum roll to the Covid Inquiry, which most of the population are hoping will provide yet further damnation for a government led by a man who’s already had to resign anyway.

Is it possible, is it at all possible, that we are all angry about the wrong thing? The Covid Inquiry will almost certainly reach conclusions all of us already know.

That in March 2020, there was a view that locking down would just push the worst of the pain to winter and it might be better to suffer it in the spring and summer, and that view turned out to be wrong. Then, later in the year, there was a view that we should lock down again as quickly as possible, and that view turned out to be right, but was overruled.

We’ll also hear, probably, that Boris Johnson just wasn’t the kind of person to tell people working in 10 Downing Street to stop having fun, and when they got rumbled, he lied about it. And that will be that.

But what we almost certainly won’t hear is anything at all about the question that really matters. Where did Covid-19 really come from? Whose fault was it? And who lied about it?

Scientists from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have concluded that the “most likely” cause is that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where experiments with coronaviruses are known to have been taking place.

And yet, for reasons that remain somewhat unfathomable, there remains precious little anger around that subject in this country, where more than 150,000 people died.

It is not in any way unfair to say that the majority of people in this country feel more primaeval rage toward Matt Hancock for having an affair when it was not legal to do so, than they do toward the Chinese government for what is also believed to be the case by the US intelligence agencies – that they made an unimaginably fatal error and then made it worse by covering it up.

There is more still rage felt toward Dominic Cummings for driving to Barnard Castle than there is towards the likely people who bear responsibility for one of the single most catastrophic things ever to happen to the species.

You might say that it doesn’t matter. Who cares? That it was an accident. That we are all so weary of Covid, the lives it took, the lives it ruined, billions temporarily, millions permanently, to summon up the furious anger required and direct it toward people who are, frankly, more powerful than us and won’t take a moment’s notice.

But actually, it does matter, certainly in one crucial way. There is an election in the US next year. It is looking increasingly likely that the Republican candidate will be Donald Trump, and if you’ve been paying attention, it’s already clear to see what his major attack lines will be. He tried them out with Nigel Farage on GB News a few weeks ago.

He told him then how he spent the early days of the pandemic taking grief from absolutely everyone for having the nerve to call Covid-19 “the China virus,” that it was all their fault. People said it was a conspiracy theory. And now, what do you know, the intelligence agencies agree with him.

He told Farage he’s going to demand China pay America and the rest of the world some “50 to 60 trillion dollars in reparations”.

Trump is, and arguably always was, a straight-up, unreconstructed neo-fascist. But liberal, normal, sensible, non-fascist people like, say almost absolutely everyone in this country, certainly every single major UK political party, do need to come up with something urgent to say back when this rather massive attack line gets repeated and repeated and repeated in the year and a half ahead.

Because, frankly, it’s probably true. It’s certainly not provably false. And the world could do with better vessels for justified anger toward China’s conduct than Donald Trump.

Whatever might be found in Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps might be humiliatingly titillating. They might yet reveal yet more illegal gatherings at his various residences, but he has already been fined by the police for that, and already been forced out of 10 Downing Street.

Is it not therefore time, indeed will it ever be time, to transfer our ire on to those who bear far more responsibility for the misery we all endured?