Was it an apology or not?

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It’s probably inevitable that anyone taking on the job of PM will end up making a number of decisions which will lead to demands for him or her to apologise. There’s no reason why Sunak should be any different. I’m not particularly a fan of demanding apologies from politicians – I’d much prefer that they got things right or, at worst, did what they could to put things right and avoid repeating the mistakes. But assuming that we want him to apologise for something, all of us will probably have our own views as to which is the most important apology to make. In Sunak’s case, my own first choice would be the ill-fated ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme during the pandemic. Launched after deliberately not seeking any expert advice on the probable consequences, there is little doubt amongst the experts that it led to a significant increase in cases, which probably led to hundreds of premature deaths. A reckless and avoidable decision which led to premature deaths, taken without even seeking expert advice; that, surely, is something for which an apology is the least that might be expected. It is, though, something which he continues to defend.

There is one thing for which he has apologised. His choice of trainers has apparently caused the bottom to fall out of the market for a particular brand, which is no longer considered ‘cool’ as a result of being worn by Sunak. It’s more than possible that he sees damaging the profitability of a large company as being a bigger sin than overseeing a few hundred early deaths; it was, after all, his concern for the financial impact of the pandemic rather than the wellbeing of the populace which led to the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme. But in saying that his apology was ‘fulsome’ it’s also possible that it wasn’t really intended as a genuine apology at all. The word has a variety of connotations, and for many, a ‘fulsome apology’ is actually an insincere one. Insincerity in a PM – who’d have thought it?

Catching the PM by surprise

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When the pandemic struck, it seems to have come as a complete surprise to Boris Johnson that the hopelessly underfunded NHS and Social Care systems had not sorted out what he called the “decades-old problem of delayed discharges”, meaning that something like 30% of hospital beds were occupied by people who didn’t need to be in a hospital at all. He’s probably going to be even more surprised, not to say angry, when he finds out who had been in charge for the previous decade, and who had been cutting budgets for the whole of that period. On second thoughts, probably not. Everything that happened before 2019, in his mind, was the fault of a different government and party. It’s only in the world that the rest of us live in where there’s any connection between the two.

Nature's Way

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Yesterday’s session of the Covid inquiry heard suggestions that Boris Johnson saw the virus as “nature’s way of dealing with old people”. For once he may have been, albeit only slightly, unfairly quoted. What he actually said was that his party believed that to be the case; as for himself, he merely said that he wasn’t entirely sure that he disagreed. It’s an important distinction, and it’s one that does make a difference. Whilst the rats seem to be quite happy to desert a sinking ship those who were closest to him seem quite happy to heap the blame on one man, the issue which should worry us more is that the phrase reflects the thinking of the government party as a whole. And it really isn’t that surprising.

Covid has been just one example of a mindset which thinks that the only important people in society are ‘working people’, and especially ‘hard-working people’ (and it’s worth noting in passing that on this point, as on so many others, the difference between the Tories and Labour is striking mostly for its absence). It is a philosophical viewpoint which, as often commented on this blog, places the needs of ‘the economy’ above those of ordinary people, and sees most of us as nothing more than resources to be exploited in the interests of that ‘economy’. But the ‘economy’ isn’t some amorphous undefined general good; from their perspective, ‘the economy’ is all about companies and businesses, not people. Enriching those who own and run those companies is the main purpose of economic activity; others simply sell their labour. And if people have no labour to sell – the old and the vulnerable – then they are disposable. Johnson may, on behalf of his party, have put it in starker terms – more honest terms, even, an unusual word to use in relation to Johnson – than his colleagues, but it would be a mistake to let the others off the hook just because of his rare burst of honesty. ‘Eat out to help the virus spread’ was simply one example of that philosophy in action – the interests of the businesses concerned were seen by the then Chancellor as trumping the interests of those who would die as a result. Sunak may not have put things in such forthright language as Johnson, but he’s every bit as guilty, and we shouldn’t allow anger with Johnson’s insouciance to cloud that fact.

Another thing we learned yesterday is that the PM’s then communications chief, Lee Cain – a man whose principal claim to fame is having dressed as a chicken to pursue David Cameron around the country during the 2010 election – believed that Covid was the wrong crisis for this particular PM (i.e. Johnson). ‘Wrong sort of crisis’ might make it sound as though he’s competing with Thérèse Coffey for that job at Network Rail, but while it has a certain air of truth, it leaves one very big question unanswered – exactly what sort of crisis would have been the right one to have someone like Johnson in charge?

Johnson getting bitten by his own decisions

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Given Boris Johnson’s long-standing propensity neither to pay much attention to detail nor to think through the consequences of any decision he takes, it was probably inevitable that the remit he himself gave to the Covid inquiry, and the decision on who should lead it would come back to bite him on his backside. ‘Seat-of-the-pants’ government is rarely going to be consequence free, but a man who has talked, or rather lied, his way out of every scrape he’s ever been in was hardly going to start giving careful thought to the remit, the role, or the personnel involved in the inquiry. The fact that he believed – and appears still to believe – that his handling of Covid was an unqualified success would hardly have encouraged him to do so either. It is a lack of care and attention which is now threatening a situation where the government ends up taking its own inquiry to court to avoid releasing documents. Or facing fines and a jail term for refusing to hand over the documents which the inquiry says it needs. Comic opera would be an overly kind description. It would make for an interesting court case, although publicly-expressed legal opinion to date seems to be near-unanimous that it’s a case which the government is destined to lose.

In principle, the demand that documents which are ‘unambiguously irrelevant’ to the inquiry should not need to be handed over is not entirely unreasonable, but the question which that raises is about who decides what is relevant or not, and on what basis, especially given the current government’s record of hiding anything which might be embarrassing to them. It’s doubtful that anyone would expect that all other aspects of government should have come to a complete stop so that ministers would concentrate 100% of their time and effort on dealing with the pandemic. However, although discussions on policy in areas unrelated to Covid might appear to be irrelevant in themselves, if a substantial proportion of ministerial time was being diverted from dealing with the pandemic to trivial issues of detail in other fields, for example, that could well have impeded the proper handling of the pandemic, and the apparently irrelevant becomes relevant. It would also give an insight into how seriously the government was taking the threat. It’s a judgement which only the inquiry itself is in a position to make – and one which, indeed, the inquiry must make. The extent to which government paid the appropriate amount of attention to the pandemic goes to the heart of what the inquiry was set up to determine. The fact that documentation is handed over to the inquiry chair doesn’t necessarily mean that all of that documentation must therefore become public; it’s perfectly possible for the two sides to agree, after reviewing the evidence, which parts should be redacted or omitted from any public reports, but allowing those who are being investigated to determine what is or is not relevant would be a severe restriction on the ability of the inquiry to reach a considered opinion. The government’s unwillingness to engage in such a process raises the obvious question – what have they got to hide?