Ex-PM backs disgraced former US president ahead of election, saying he ‘won’t ditch the Ukrainians’
Boris Johnson has backed Donald Trump ahead of November’s US presidential election, saying his return to the White House could be “just what the world needs”.
In his weekly Daily Mail column, the former prime minister argued that if Trump backs Ukraine in its war against Russia, his renewed leadership “can be a big win for the world”.
Continue reading...Heather Hallett’s first findings are to be published before the summer and will show how austerity and Brexit hit pandemic planning
An explosive report spelling out how the Conservative government failed to prepare the country for the Covid-19 pandemic as it obsessed about Brexit is to be released before the likely date of the next general election, the Observer has been told.
In a move that will cause alarm in Downing Street, Heather Hallett’s independent Covid-19 inquiry will issue a detailed interim report “before the summer” on the first batch of public hearings held last June and July, which revealed a catalogue of errors, including the lack of PPE and failures to act on recommendations of previous pandemic planning exercises.
Continue reading...Sir David Omand tells parliamentary inquiry the platform should be restricted to ‘background mood music’
The former head of GCHQ has called for an end to the government handling crises over WhatsApp, saying the platform might suit gossip and informal exchanges but is inappropriate for important decision-making.
Sir David Omand, who ran the UK intelligence service before becoming the permanent secretary of the Home Office and the Cabinet Office, criticised the way government was conducted in the pandemic and said future crises should be handled with “proper process”.
Continue reading...Covid inquiry has published hundreds of new pieces of evidence and written statements on its website
Back to the Covid evidence and, as Chris Smyth reports in the Times, a Treasury official has revealed that, as the government considered ways of boosting the economy in the summer of 2020, it considered issuing people with pre-paid debit cards.
Dan York-Smith, who is now the Treasury’s director general for tax and welfare and who was head of the strategy, planning and budget group during Covid, discusses the plan in his witness statement. Another proposals that was considered was to distribute vouchers for use in some retail sectors.
The first option, namely the distribution of pre-paid debit cards, presented substantial challenges and risks. For example, registering every adult in the UK would have presented very significant challenges in the time available. Even if that could be achieved, there would have been significant risks associated with tens of millions of cards being distributed through the post as part of a highly publicised and marketed scheme, such as theft, fraud and loss. That was a risk that also attached to sending out vouchers by post. A substantial customer support function would also have been required, which did not exist. The compressed timetable of the scheme increased the significance of these challenges.
It has been a pleasure working with Andrew. He is a man of great bravery and we remain hugely supportive of his campaigning on a number of issues. He rightly sees his role to raise issues of concern to his constituents. There are too few in parliament prepared to do that.
He has been an excellent constituency MP and we wish him every success in his bid for re-election in North West Leicestershire. As a reflection of that support, we have made a considerable donation to Andrew’s campaign fund.
Continue reading...Damian Green says government must ‘stick to guns’ but chair of European Research Group calls for bill to be pulled and rewritten
Sunak says the PM had to balance competing interests during Covid.
Only he could do that, because only he saw all the competing arguments made by different cabinet ministers.
Your phone, you said, doesn’t retain, and nor do you have access to, text messages at all relating to the period of the crisis.
In addition, you said although on occasion you use WhatsApp to communicate around meetings and logistics and so on, you generally were only party to WhatsApp groups that were set up to deal with individual circumstances such as arrangements for calls, meetings and so on and so forth. You don’t now have access to any of the WhatsApps that you did send during the time of the crisis, do you?
I’ve changed my phone multiple times over the past few years and, as that has happened, the messages have not come across.
As you said, I’m not a prolific user of WhatsApp in the first instance – primarily communication with my private office and obviously anything that was of significance through those conversations or exchanges would have been recorded officially by my civil servants as one would expect.
Continue reading...The then chancellor’s plan proved to be of no economic benefit and was decried by scientists – but it clearly set out the political aims of ‘Dishy Rishi’
There is no blue heritage plaque above the stainless-steel open kitchen at the branch of Wagamama at London’s Festival Hall – but the restaurant might have claims to one. It was here, in delivering a couple of plates of katsu curry – one chicken, one vegan – on 8 July 2020, that our current prime minister in effect launched his campaign for the country’s leadership.
During that lockdown spring as pandemic chancellor, Rishi Sunak had one of the few enviable public roles: he was cast as the man who saved the economy by giving money away. By the time he pitched up at Wagamama that lunchtime, his various Covid-help schemes had dished out £176bn in furlough payments and loans and deferred taxes. In those efforts Sunak, little known before the crisis, had sometimes looked like the only sober and responsible member of her majesty’s government. The headline act of his summer budget statement, “eat out to help out”, changed that narrative.
Continue reading...Rare moments of candour from the former prime minister did little to assuage the anger of bereaved families
Since being forced out of office last year, Boris Johnson will have had many moments to reflect on his time in Downing Street and to ponder what he might have done differently.
At the UK Covid-19 inquiry on Thursday, he shared one of those reflections, and – perhaps unsurprisingly, as it ultimately led to his downfall as prime minister – it concerned his handling of the Downing Street lockdown parties.
Continue reading...Former PM says he ‘frankly assumed’ Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance had been involved in talks about scheme
Johnson has walked back claims that Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance were present to “properly discuss” the eat out to help out scheme before it went live, conceding that no scientists attended meetings about the scheme.
Johnson said he had “frankly assumed” they were involved in talks about the scheme with the Treasury and that he was “surprised it was smuggled past them”.
Continue reading...Former PM also angrily denies comments he made about letting Covid ‘rip’ meant he had been uncaring
Boris Johnson assumed that Rishi Sunak’s flagship “eat out to help out” hospitality scheme had been cleared by government scientists and was surprised to learn later it was not, the former prime minister has told the inquiry into Covid.
In evidence that could pose notable difficulties for the prime minister when he appears before the inquiry on Monday, Johnson said it would have been “normal” for advisers such as Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance to have been briefed, and that he assumed this had been the case.
Continue reading...Former prime minister also admits he should have worked more closely with devolved administrations
Hugo Keith KC is questioning Johnson.
He asks if Johnson’s approach has been to give all relevant material to the inquiry.
I understand the feelings of these victims and their families and I am deeply sorry for the pain and the loss and suffering of those victims and their families.
Continue reading...We fact check the assertion at the Covid inquiry that Britain was ‘well down the European table, and well down the world table’
Boris Johnson has questioned the assertion by the lead counsel in Britain’s Covid inquiry that Britain was among the worst performers in western Europe in terms of the number of excess deaths recorded during the pandemic.
The former prime minister told Hugo Keith KC on Wednesday that the UK was “well down the European table, and well down the world table”.
Continue reading...Ex-PM tells inquiry abusive messages between staff were inevitable passion of people ‘doing their best’ under great stress
Boris Johnson has insisted he was not properly warned about the potential seriousness of Covid during early 2020, as he dismissed abusive messages sent between his staff as the inevitable passion of people who were “doing their best”.
In a sometimes combative start to his evidence before the Covid inquiry in London, which began with protesters being removed from the hearing room, Johnson apologised for mistakes made, but then argued that these were not necessarily errors that could have been avoided.
Continue reading...Technical team unable to view any messages for four months from before arrival of virus to after first lockdown
The mystery of Boris Johnson’s Covid-era WhatsApp messages has taken another twist the day before the former prime minister gives evidence to the inquiry into the pandemic, after it was reported that nearly six months of messages could not be retrieved.
There has already been a lengthy saga over the evidence Johnson has submitted, with Rishi Sunak’s government refusing to hand over the ex-PM’s unredacted messages, notebooks and diaries until ordered to do so by the high court.
Continue reading...Covid inquiry expected to be told former PM was open to ‘military options’ to obtain ‘impounded’ jabs from factory in Leiden
Boris Johnson’s appearance before the Covid-19 inquiry is not until Wednesday but it is already making headlines in the Netherlands amid a mixture of amusement and alarm at claims he asked for British spies to plan a “raid” on a Dutch vaccine plant.
The operation – according to sources who briefed Johnson’s employer, the Daily Mail – would have taken place against the backdrop of a tit-for-tat row in March 2021 between the then prime minister and the EU, which was moving towards restricting exports of vaccines across the Channel.
Continue reading...Discredited ex-PM faces a demolition job in one of the few policy areas to which he and his allies still cling
Even at the height of his popularity, Boris Johnson routinely avoided close questioning – to the extent of once hiding in a fridge to dodge a TV inquisitor. The former UK prime minister is likely to be dreading next week’s appearance at the Covid inquiry. And he probably should.
It is no exaggeration to say that events on Wednesday and Thursday at the inquiry’s repurposed office building in Paddington, west London, could help define the post-power image and legacy of Johnson, and very possibly not for the good.
Continue reading...Ex-health secretary has described Boris Johnson’s Downing Street as undermined by ‘culture of fear’
Tens of thousands of lives could have been saved if the UK had locked down three weeks earlier, Matt Hancock has told the Covid inquiry, as he described the operation of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street as undermined by a “culture of fear”.
The former health secretary said his staff were abused by Dominic Cummings and that Johnson’s then chief adviser attempted to exclude ministers and even Johnson himself from key decisions at the start of the pandemic, hampering the government’s response.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here
Hancock is now deploying the defence previewed in the Observer on Sunday. (See 9.58am.)
He says from the middle of January the DHSC was “trying to effectively raise the alarm”. He says:
We were trying to wake up Whitehall to the scale of the problem and this wasn’t a problem that couldn’t be addressed only from the health department. Non-pharmaceutical interventions cannot be put in place by a health department. A health department can’t shut schools. It should have been grasped and led from the centre of government earlier. And you’ve seen evidence that repeatedly the department and I tried to make this happen.
And we were on occasions blocked, and at other times our concerns were not taken as seriously as they should have been until the very end of February.
Continue reading...Levelling up secretary breaks away from evidence at Covid inquiry to apologise for ‘errors I and others made’
Gove breaks away from the line of questioning to issue an apology.
I want to take this opportunity, if I may, to apologise to the victims who endured so much pain, the families who’ve endured so much loss, as a result of the mistakes that were made by government in response to the pandemic.
And as a minister, responsible for the Cabinet Office, and who was also close to many of the decisions that were made, I must take my share of responsibility for that.
Continue reading...England’s chief medical officer says incomplete knowledge of epidemiological concepts can be ‘dangerous thing’
Sir Chris Whitty spent early parts of the Covid pandemic trying to “implore” people in government not to publicly discuss health concepts they did not fully understand such as “flattening the curve” of infections and herd immunity, he said.
Giving evidence to the inquiry into Covid, Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, said he did this after realising that incomplete knowledge could be “a dangerous thing”.
Continue reading...Chief medical officer for England and chief UK medical adviser says civil servants did good job but PM took ‘unique’ decisions
Q: Was there no aspect on the pandemic on which you did not advise?
Whitty says he would not put it like that. He says he felt it important to advise on issues where advice from a scientist or doctor would be useful.
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