Honesty is too much to expect from the Tory blame game

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Former health secretary Matt Hancock giving evidence to the Covid inquiry at Dorland House in London on Tuesday (PA Media)

Those providing evidence to the Covid inquiry are doing nothing if not living up to expectations, as they parrot lines of regret before denying any real responsibility for our woeful preparation for and management of the pandemic. Each of the witnesses is at pains to shift the blame in the direction of some anonymous others.

As Tom Peck so clearly describes, Matt Hancock, in his first appearance before the panel, attempted to manoeuvre the focus toward the lack of preparedness he inherited and the government’s prioritising of post-Brexit planning; both of which could not be blamed on him. Jeremy Hunt, the man who was in the job before him, was previously keen to shift attention away from pandemic planning to the government’s Brexit preoccupations. This, of course, had nothing to do with David Cameron and George Osborne, who had shelved the Cygnus report and committed to an ideological austerity approach to the economy that stripped the NHS and other public services. This was, in their eyes, a necessity based on the state of the economy they had inherited

And so it will go on, with one after the other of these incompetents excusing themselves as they try, not so subtly, to shift the blame in the direction of some unspecified cause for which others were responsible. A single grain of honesty and integrity from our politicians should be the least we might expect from them but that, I fear, is no longer part of their repertoire. As Boris Johnson said of dignity, these qualities “are grossly overrated” these days and we are all the poorer as a result.