Just hours after Dominic Cummings’ marathon evidence session to the Covid inquiry on Tuesday, Boris Johnson met the former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison for a drink at a Mayfair private member’s club, 5 Hertford Street. Johnson has been following the hearings throughout and after some of the more explosive evidence that emerged in the inquiry room in Dorland House, near Paddington, that day, he may well have been in need of a large glass of Australian red. While Johnson’s reputation for changing his mind on big decisions is well known, the multiple references to him being like an out of control shopping trolley who tended to “wild oscillations” will have stung. Lee Cain, his former director of communications, even admitted that his then boss’s erratic decision-making was exhausting. In WhatsApp messages shared with the inquiry, the UK’s top civil servant, Simon Case, said Johnson could not lead and was making government “impossible”. Even Martin Reynolds, the senior official whom Johnson referred to as his “loyal labrador”, said: “It’s fair to say that the prime minister did, as it were, blow hot and cold.”
Allies, however, suggested that Johnson’s tendency to change his mind, depending on which adviser was last in the room, was an inevitable consequence of being the boss. “He was the only person who had to constantly arbitrate on the many competing views there were about what to do,” one said. Johnson had used the “trolley” metaphor about himself ever since the days of his leave-v-remain quandary over Brexit, according to two sources close to the former Tory leader. That is, before Cummings got in on the act. It is unclear whether that took the weight out of claims that “pretty much everyone” in No 10 referred to him as such. One of the most indelible assertions about Johnson’s leadership was Cain’s suggestion that the pandemic was the “wrong crisis” for his skill set. “He’s somebody who would often delay making decisions. He would often seek counsel from multiple sources and change his mind on issues. Sometimes in politics that can be a great strength. “If you look at something like Covid, you need quick decisions and you need people to hold the course and have the strength of mind to do that over a sustained period of time and not constantly unpick things … I felt it was the wrong challenge for him mostly.”
Government insiders have suggested one of the reasons Johnson struggled with decisions at the start of the pandemic was because he didn’t take it seriously. Cummings told the inquiry the then prime minister did not “think it’s a big deal”, and he boasted about shaking hands in a hospital against scientists’ advice. Helen MacNamara, the former deputy cabinet secretary, told the inquiry she was concerned about Johnson’s “jovial tone” at the time. Her written witness statement adds that he was “very confident” the UK would “sail through” the Covid crisis. Johnson’s chaotic indecisiveness delayed lockdown measures, the inquiry heard. Yet, according to Cummings, Johnson had claimed there was an upside to it. “Chaos isn’t that bad,” he allegedly said. “Chaos means that everyone has to look to me to see who’s in charge.” Even at the height of the pandemic, and after being seriously ill with the disease himself, Johnson struggled with the idea of lockdown. He succumbed to pressure from the media. Cummings told the inquiry: “[He] kept saying I should have been the mayor of Jaws and kept the beaches open.” Serious questions were also raised about Johnson’s focus in early 2020 when he took an “insane” – according to Cummings – 10-day holiday at his grace-and-favour mansion Chevening despite growing concerns over the spread of the virus. During that time he received no emails or red box submissions about Covid. Reynolds, his private secretary at the time, told the inquiry he could not recall why the prime minister had been out of the loop. Cummings claimed he was busy finalising his divorce and grappling with financial problems. Senior government figures have claimed Johnson wanted time out to finish the biography of Shakespeare he had been commissioned to write before he entered No 10 and for which he had been paid a hefty advance, although his spokesperson denied this. Some of the most shocking evidence to emerge this week was that which revealed Johnson’s dismissive attitude to elderly people. He told aides he sympathised with the view that the UK was being “pathetic” and that Covid was “just nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them”.
Johnson has long been known for his flexible relationship with the truth. Ultimately, it was his lies to parliament about the Partygate scandal that forced him to quit. The inquiry heard that during the pandemic he was “telling so many lies that his sometimes truthful statements are not believed”. However, Cummings, his fiercest critic, also claimed that while the finger of blame for the government’s failings was often pointed at Johnson, it was not always his fault. Instead, the civil service and the Whitehall system should take their share of the blame, he said. Johnson will have his own moment in front of the inquiry’s lawyers, expected to be during the second week of December. His legal team has been listening closely to the witnesses and poring over the written statements to prepare him. His health secretary, Matt Hancock, will appear the same week, while Rishi Sunak, in deference to his position as the current prime minister, is believed to have been pencilled in as the final witness of the module, in effect giving him the last word. Johnson’s spokesperson has so far declined to comment on the evidence, but says he is co-operating fully with the inquiry. His allies say he wants to prove wrong those who claim he was the “wrong person, at the wrong time”. Yet as the inquiry continues, it is becoming increasingly clear he will struggle to reverse that narrative.