Covid-19: Whitehall chaos and misplaced confidence undermined UK’s response, inquiry hears

A toxic and chaotic environment at the heart of government, with distrust between civil servants and political aides, a weak and vacillating prime minister, and a boosterish conviction that the UK’s pandemic response would be “world beating.” That was the picture that emerged as the UK Covid-19 Inquiry took evidence this week from key figures involved in the government’s early response to the pandemic.In early 2020, at the start of a crisis that was to see England locked down three times and many lives lost, the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, initially thought covid was no worse than swine flu. WhatsApp messages shared by the team around him and diaries kept by the then chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, as the pandemic unfolded reveal despair among political aides and officials that Johnson, nicknamed “the trolley” by his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, kept veering back and forth in trying to decide…
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