A large number of men and women from the bereaved families had gathered outside the anonymous Covid inquiry building in west London long before the proceedings were due to start. But not quite early enough. Boris Johnson had sneaked in shortly before seven in the morning. So brave. Always willing to stand by the decisions he made. Always willing to stand up and be counted. To look his accusers in the eye.
Heather Hallett, the inquiry chair, got things under way with a rebuke. Witnesses were not supposed to clear the path by briefing details of their defence to newspapers before their appearance. Johnson looked amazed. He had no idea how so much had been leaked to friendly sources. It was completely baffling. Nothing to do with him. Maybe these political editors were telepathic. Nor did he have a clue why so many of his allies had been writing pieces trashing the inquiry in the past few days. God moves in mysterious ways.
“I promise to tell the truth …” said Johnson, taking the oath. Was this the first philosophical conundrum of the day? Was what we were about to get at best a partial truth and even an outright lie? Because that’s what the Convict has always done. He’s lied to friends, to family, to wives, to the country. He’s lied in parliament. So why should now be any different? He wasn’t about to undergo a personality transplant in the legal setting of the inquiry.
Does the Convict even know that he’s lying? Is he so detached from reality, so locked into his solipsistic narcissism, that he convinces himself that the truth can be whatever he wants – whatever he needs – it to be? The ultimate moral relativist. Where every truth has a half-life measured in minutes. Or is there a part of Johnson that recognises what he’s doing? That feels compromised and diminished by his actions. Whose every falsehood further corrodes what passes for his soul.
We began with the Convict’s missing WhatsApp messages. The leading counsel, Hugo Keith, asked what had happened to the messages between January and June 2020. Johnson shrugged. He was devastated to have found that he had had the one phone on the entire planet from which it had been impossible to retrieve messages. And he had forgotten the password. 1234.
It was all the more frustrating because he had had so much fascinating tech training from Jennifer Arcuri. Most of it horizontal. Had he tried to restore the phone to factory settings when he had realised so many of the messages might be incriminating? Johnson looked bewildered. He and Arcuri hadn’t got to the factory settings page while pole dancing.
Then the Convict mumbled an apology. Soz that so many people had died but he had done his best. That was about it. It didn’t sound genuine and heartfelt. No sense that as prime minister more might have been expected of him. The bereaved families didn’t sound that impressed. As ever, Johnson expected forgiveness to be extended without any real sense of contrition. What had been his biggest mistake? Easy. Not coordinating the messaging between England, Scotland and wherever. Wales and Northern Ireland were wherever apparently. Yup. Because that was the big question everyone wanted to ask.
Keith pressed on. The UK had one of the worst death rates in Europe. No, it didn’t, said Johnson. We were about average. The suave KC sighed pointedly, summoning up a slide showing the UK to be second last. The Convict seemed amazed that a lawyer might actually have some evidence.
This was a disconnect that was to continue throughout the day. We were told Johnson had spent 10 days locked in with his legal team preparing his defence, yet time and again he was blindsided by the most obvious questions. Those legendary powers of concentration. Or maybe he assumed every lawyer was as rubbish as Suella Braverman.
Within minutes Johnson looked punch-drunk. Sweaty, pallid and shifty. Whatever else he has been doing in the last year, he hasn’t been getting in shape. Next he blamed the cabinet for the slowness to lock down. He would have done it much earlier. A lie. Keith pointed him to the evidence of previous witnesses who had said the cabinet was sidelined throughout. Oh, the Convict shrugged sulkily.
Next Keith welcomed Johnson into a Whole New World. The one of life in No 10. Boris had no idea that Dominic Cummings was a potty-mouthed sociopath. A shocker that. Nor did he have any idea that Downing Street was totally dysfunctional. Chaos had always followed him around wherever he went so he thought it was totally normal for everyone to hate each other while getting pissed and shagging against the photocopier. He was sure that Margaret Thatcher regularly called Nigel Lawson a “useless fuckpig”.
By now it had become clear that Johnson had only rarely been aware that he was meant to have been prime minister. He seemed genuinely surprised when Keith told him. There again his amnesia was almost total. He could remember almost nothing of the early months of the pandemic. Like Party Marty, he was of the view that if you could remember your time in Downing Street, you weren’t really there. It hadn’t been his job to pay attention.
The more detailed the questions became after lunch, the more confused Boris became. It was a long day and he was used to a snooze round about now. He was sure he had mainly done the right things and it was harsh to criticise. No one could have expected Covid to creep up while he was celebrating Brexit and having a 10-day break in Chevening. Cobra was for cissies. And if you excluded all the things he hadn’t done – almost everything – then he had done just about all that could be expected from a man who struggled to take responsibility.
With a recurring sense of conscience, Keith kept returning to a sense of right and wrong. Johnson was nonplussed by this leitmotif. Understandably. He is unfamiliar with a moral universe. All that ever mattered was his self-preservation. Hindsight was a foreign country. A place where he might be expected to be capable of self-reflection. When he talked of letting people die it was only ever meant as a rhetorical device. No one could have done more for the country than him. To call him indecisive was a calumny. He frequently made up his mind. It was just that he then had a habit of changing it.
Round about 4.30, Hallett put Boris out of his misery. It had been a long day. Tomorrow might well be longer. Johnson had been left pleading that no one could possibly have done better. That his government was a beacon of sanity. Only many of us can remember being open-mouthed at the incompetence at the time. Three and a half years later, we’re still open-mouthed.
John Crace’s book Depraved New World (Guardian Faber, £16.99) is out now. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy and save 18% at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
