{"id":1247,"date":"2023-10-31T06:26:33","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T06:26:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/covid-inquiry-whatsapps-paint-picture-of-chaos\/"},"modified":"2023-10-31T06:26:33","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T06:26:33","slug":"covid-inquiry-whatsapps-paint-picture-of-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/covid-inquiry-whatsapps-paint-picture-of-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid inquiry WhatsApps paint picture of chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Covid inquiry WhatsApps paint picture of chaos<\/p>\n

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By Chris Mason<\/div>\n
Political editor, BBC News<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Shambolic dysfunction in Downing Street, with thousands upon thousands of lives at stake.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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That is the claim, to the Covid inquiry, from some of those who worked very closely alongside Boris Johnson during the pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They are painting a picture of chaos, and of a prime minister they claim was temperamentally unsuited to the scale of the challenge the pandemic confronted him with. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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We will see how Mr Johnson and others respond to this in the coming weeks. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This inquiry is giving us a look into the workings of government, with the bonnet up. And, bluntly, it is not a pretty sight: a health emergency, the liberty and education of millions curtailed, the economic future of the country on the line too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Learning lessons afterwards is what a public inquiry is all about – and the UK, in modern times, had never been confronted with anything like Covid-19.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For those of us poring over the evidence now gushing towards us, there is a clear risk of hindsight bias. We know now what came next; we didn’t – and they didn’t – know then.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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What stands out to me so far is a combination of factors which affords us a unique and real time rolling insight into the moods, whims, frustrations and anger of key players at the time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The pandemic, with its need for social distance, coincided with a written communications tool – WhatsApp – becoming a mainstream platform for communication.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But not just any communication: an informal, minute-by-minute written down substitution for what might otherwise have been said out loud ad-libbed remarks, lost to the ether moments after their utterance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Instead, as patchy as it might be in the places, we get a glimpse of the tone and mood of senior figures, and not just their point of view. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It is often many of the things many of us can be some of the time: unvarnished, crude and shorn of the usual gloss applied to communications for public consumption.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And it’s fascinating. We are getting a sense of the organisational oddities, human failings and frailties, and decision making processes of those who fate chose to be in positions of power when the pandemic struck – and so compelled to make decisions of a magnitude none of them can have anticipated ever having to make.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And there is plenty more to come – Boris Johnson’s former director of communications, Lee Cain, and his former chief of staff, Dominic Cummings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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All of this matters, for three reasons: the accountability of individuals; the lessons future governments can learn; and, also, the implications for the politics of today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Because after we have heard from the Downing Street advisers, it will be the turn, before Christmas, to hear from the politicians.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Yes, Boris Johnson, but also, too, Rishi Sunak – the chancellor then, the prime minister now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The electorate will be reminded now of events then, and decisions then, which he took.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And a final thought: given the unprecedented scale of what confronted the government then, how much of the chaos we are now getting a glimpse of would have been likely under any prime minister, or collection of senior individuals in government? <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And how much was a direct consequence of Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Dominic Cummings and others, and the relationships between them?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It is a question that will always be – to a great extent – unanswerable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But it is one worth keeping in mind as the inquiry progresses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Related Topics<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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