The Covid Inquiry: "Kafkaesque nightmare doesn't begin to explain it"

The next instalment of our Covid Inquiry coverage.

Like many of you, we have been listening in horror as details of the internecine circus of chaos at the heart of Westminster emerged this week.

From Dominic Cumming’s astonishing admission that the impact of lockdown on vulnerable and at-risk groups was "entirely, appallingly neglected by the whole planning system", to Johnson commenting that the climate within No. 10 was one of "an orgy of narcissism", to Lee Cain’s steadfast belief that the greatest mistake during March 2020 was a "lack of clarity" rather than, say, the deliberate, unethical and devastating deployment of a year-long campaign of fear and propaganda, to the Inquiry’s apparent belief that "Zero Covid was a viable UK option with favourable trade offs" (as paediatrician Michael Absoud incredulously commented on social media)...it is hard to say if this is a farce or a tragedy. To borrow some words from Cummings, "Kafkaesque nightmare doesn't begin to explain it."

So shocked have we been by the utterly criminal chaos inside No. 10, and so worried are we that without course correction the Inquiry’s warped focus coupled with its failure to ask the right questions will leave us staring into a future lockdown abyss, that we have decided to start our own running commentary on the Inquiry. Our aim will be to highlight some of the more egregious details not covered in the mainstream and to record the failings of the Inquiry as we see them.

We start our commentary with Helen MacNamara, deputy cabinet secretary during the pandemic, who appeared before the Inquiry today.

MacNamara’s evidence was extensive and detailed and though it did not contain quite as many of the colourful news-hooks of earlier testimonies, it gave crucial insights into the Government’s handling of the first year of the pandemic. Not least, the former Deputy Cabinet Secretary corroborated what has already fast become evident from the input of other senior Whitehall officials: a complete absence of actionable operational plans, particularly within the health department; a super-hero mentality among senior (mostly male) decision-makers; serial over-confidence, over-statement and outright deceptions, from the Health Secretary in particular; an "absence of humanity"; and a macho ‘make it up as you go’ approach to the response within Number 10.

But perhaps most critically, coming from one of the most senior civil servants with responsibility for good governance, MacNamara perceptively illuminated the remarkable characteristics of Number 10’s approach to handling what she described as the “huge political, ethical, moral, social and economic questions” at that time: the bypassing and marginalisation of the Cabinet; elected officials passing the buck to unelected officials; and inadequate participation of accountable individuals in the formulation of critical policy decisions. The picture that emerged was of a grave deficit of accountability at the heart of the Government’s pandemic response.

In her view, though the mantra ‘following the science’ perhaps worked as a comms strategy it was an “odd thing to stick so religiously to” reflecting that “you’d never suggest … ‘following the economics’” was a sound strategy. She also heavily criticised the idea that ministers could “abrogate responsibility to an unelected group of people … it’s not fair and not right in terms of who these choices belong to”.

MacNamara was also asked to recount her serious and consequential concerns that by mid-2020 senior (male) policy-makers were overtly and corrosively excluding or under-valuing female contributions, and as a consequence policy decisions lacked female expertise and female perspective. Dysfunctional only begins to describe the calamitous collapse of good governance and, consequently, good government revealed by her recollections.

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ANNOUNCEMENT

If you appreciate our Substacks, you may also be interested to read The Accountability Deficit, How Ministers and officials evaded accountability, misled the public and violated democracy during the pandemic, a forensic and explosive account of serious pandemic failures written by Molly, Arabella and Ben of UsForThem, which is arriving later this month. If you would like to be notified when it becomes available you can sign up BELOW.

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