'Sorry, not sorry' - Why Johnson’s appearance at the COVID Inquiry was so meaningless and hollow

One of the aspects that was most staggering about Johnson’s appearance before the Covid Inquiry was that he appeared to be giving lessons on how the UK could ‘do better’ to prepare for any future pandemic. 

Johnson did this by insisting that most things the government didn’t do should have been done - in hindsight. 

Johnson and his cabinet ministers, advisers, those within the scientific community working with the government “should have twigged sooner,” he said.

This poses an immediate problem because it challenges the views of those who remember supporting the government at the time by saying things such as ‘‘They were doing a good job all things considered.’

Of course, they were not - the evidence so far given to the COVID Inquiry [which is still really in its infancy several months since it began in June] has shown this. More in the coming months and years will follow. 

But - 

The biggest challenge of all for Johnson and his supporters who insisted at the time that the government was ‘doing a good job all things considered’ - is that many of us were pointing out what was going wrong - in real time - while also being told [by them] that we were ‘not helping’ by pointing it out. 

What is hindsight now, to both Johnson and his supporters, were suggestions being made at the time by those concerned the government was not ‘doing a good job all things considered’, on the contrary.

There was entirely independent scientific body set up by former government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King [iSage] for this express purpose, in fact.

Indeed, as those who have watched the Inquiry since June have learned, some of those who agreed that the government was not doing a good job all things considered appeared to be working within the government itself; people like government cabinet secretary Simon Case, for example, who said: 

“...I’ve never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country.”

Or Chief Scientific Office Sir Patrick Vallance who -among many other things - called Boris Johnson: 

“...a weak, indecisive PM.”

Or comms adviser Lee Cain who said:

“…it was the wrong crisis for this prime minister’s skillset.”

Presumably then, if the UK is to learn anything from this pandemic as Boris Johnson insists it must, then it might be to not elect another Prime Minister as ridiculous - or as evidently dangerous and unskilled - as Boris Johnson.