In modern Britain’s darkest hour, we needed a Churchill but got a charlatan in charge

Editorial: Baroness Hallett and her Covid inquiry team will make their findings public in due course, but for the time being it is plain that one of the most grievous weaknesses in the system was the man at the top: Boris Johnson

(Dave Brown)

The Hallett inquiry won’t produce even interim findings on the official response to Covid until some time in 2024, and its final report will not arrive for several years after that. However, two things are already apparent from the evidence presented thus far in the first of the modules, titled “resilience and preparedness”: that the UK was not resilient when the Covid crisis broke in early 2020; and neither, indeed, was it prepared.

Baroness Hallett and her team will make their judicious findings public in due course, but for the time being, it is plain to see that one of the most grievous weaknesses in the system was the man at the top of the machine: Boris Johnson.

As Lee Cain, his head of communications, put it so gently, this was the wrong kind of crisis for Mr Johnson’s skill set. Mr Cain is demonstrably right about that – and there is an overwhelming consensus emerging from this inquiry, as well as the various inquiries into Partygate, that Mr Johnson’s personal and professional behaviour fell far short of the demands of the hour.