The buck stops with Boris Johnson

Editorial: Now that the lid has been lifted by Dominic Cummings, it is clear Mr Johnson personally took key decisions – often against his scientists’ advice, despite claims he was ‘following the science’, and without consulting a barely functioning cabinet

(Dave Brown)

After his remarkably candid appearance before the Commons health and science select committees, Dominic Cummings will doubtless be vilified as a wrecker determined to bring down a prime minister who pushed him out as his chief adviser last November. Critics will accuse him of recreating the past to try to change the public’s poor view of him, forged by his ill-fated trip to County Durham during the first lockdown.

Strikingly, a very different Mr Cummings emerged after his seven hours of testimony: not the all-powerful Rasputin-like adviser but someone who lost many arguments on coronavirus inside Downing Street and whose relationship with the leader with whom he “got Brexit done” had deteriorated beyond repair several months before Mr Cummings departed.

This was a more humble, contrite, even at times self-deprecating Mr Cummings, who said: “It is completely crazy I should have been in such a senior position, in my personal opinion. I’m not smart.” Ministers had expected him to say “I told you so” but Mr Cummings admitted his share of mistakes and blame for a flawed initial response to the pandemic which he argued cost tens of thousands of lives.

Even if he was partly motivated by revenge, the narrative Mr Cummings painted is a credible and convincing one: a prime minister who, worryingly, regarded the economic cost of lockdowns as worse than the impact of the disease. Mr Cummings repeatedly used the telling metaphor of Mr Johnson as a “shopping trolley” smashing from one side of the aisle to the other, someone who changed his mind 10 times a day and was buffeted around by lockdown sceptics such as Conservative MPs and his former employer, the Daily Telegraph.

It fits with what we have witnessed in the past 15 months. So does the alarming picture Mr Cummings painted of the chaos and meltdown inside a dysfunctional Downing Street when the pandemic broke out.

His most wounding charge was that Mr Johnson did not learn the lessons from delaying the first lockdown, and repeated his mistake last autumn, leading to a second wave in the winter which, it should be remembered, claimed more lives than the first one. The eventual independent inquiry might well turn on the events last September when Mr Johnson rejected his scientific advisers’ recommendation for a circuit-breaker lockdown.

Mr Cummings was right to argue that the official investigation, which will not start until next spring, has been delayed too long. His evidence highlighted the need to learn lessons more quickly than that – a reminder that Mr Johnson might be repeating his errors today on issues such as the tight border controls needed to stop new variants being imported into the UK. The same balance between the economy and public health must be got right as the government decides whether to end restrictions on 21 June as planned.

Mr Cummings acknowledged that not all the mistakes could be laid at the prime minister’s door. He argued that “group think” and “the wiring of the system” could have led to 500,000 deaths until he and others pushed Mr Johnson from his Plan A to Plan B, and the first lockdown. Others will challenge that version of events but his claims must be put to the test.

Many headlines will focus on Matt Hancock, whose position as health secretary must be under threat after Mr Cummings’s searing criticism of his record on pandemic planning, personal protective equipment, mass testing and care homes. Again, it rings true; Mr Hancock’s “protective ring” around care homes did not exist, or prevent the death of more than 30,000 residents. Mr Cummings should now provide the two committees with the evidence to substantiate his claim that the health secretary lied to his colleagues on multiple occasions, so the MPs can make a proper judgement on this very serious allegation.

The cloud hanging over Mr Hancock should not eclipse the very serious questions Mr Johnson must now answer. The buck stops with him. Now that the lid has been lifted by his former adviser, it is clear Mr Johnson personally took key decisions – often against his scientists’ advice, despite claims he was “following the science”, and without consulting a barely functioning cabinet.

It will not be good enough for Mr Johnson to argue that these important matters will be addressed by an inquiry that is unlikely to report before the next general election. A former close ally who knows him better than most has called him “unfit” to be prime minister. Mr Johnson needs to convince the country to the contrary by answering Mr Cummings’s charges sooner rather than later.