Tuesday at the Covid inquiry was men-who-think-about-the-Roman-empire day. Dominic Cummings presents as a man who thinks of the Roman empire so often that a big part of him believes he actually came up with the Roman empire. In the end, though, he couldn’t save Rome from itself because everyone else in it were either “useless fuckpigs”, “morons”, or “cunts”. He and former Downing Street comms chief Lee “Caino” Cain did their best to hold off the dark ages, but ultimately were vanquished by the hordes of barbarians/decided to leave and start a boutique corporate PR consultancy. Sic transit gloria mundi, as Boris Johnson might say, because he knows Latin.
The only thing this cavalcade of know-alls didn’t seem to know is the first thing about themselves. Turns out Boris Johnson accused Cummings of being part of an “orgy of narcissism”, so the former PM can add irony to his tally of pandemic kills. Speaking of which, we learned from the diary of the government’s former chief scientist, Patrick Vallance, that Johnson came to believe that Covid was “nature’s way of dealing with old people”. Yes, if you were one of the many, many old people who voted for Boris Johnson in 2019, this week was the moment it formally emerged that he was extremely relaxed about you moving on to the great suckers convention in the sky. But could the former PM settle an argument – by extension, was it “nature’s way” that Johnson himself came so close to death, before nature pulled out of the move and allowed him to nature’s-way tens of thousands more people unnecessarily because he was too morally and intellectually weak to take a decision? If so, think of this theory as survival of the shittest.
As the pandemic approached, then raged, no one – from the prime minister to the cabinet secretary to the health secretary – seems to have realised how bad they, specifically, were at their own jobs. Now that we’re seeing some of the receipts for their backstage chaos and deadly incompetence, the major takeaways are this country’s systemic inadequacy and the sheer monumental unsuitability of the specific set of people charged with dealing with the crisis. It’s like putting the Real Housewives in charge of the Manhattan Project.
Anyway: Cummings. Here he was, Robert Stroppenheimer, getting away quite lightly on his character-led failings by being asked about messages like the one about former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara, which ended, “I don’t care how it’s done but that woman must be out of our hair – we cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that cunt.”
Perhaps this is what George Osborne was teasing on his podcast last week when he said that the Covid inquiry was soon to learn of WhatsApps containing some “really pretty disgusting language and misogynistic language”. This obviously means so much more coming from the guy who once said he wouldn’t rest until Theresa May was “chopped up in bags in my freezer”. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think those specific remarks of Cummings or Osborne were misogynist. With Cummings, stilettos as knives make more sense in this context than stilettos as shoes. Although I always enjoy the bits of Dominic’s output where he remembers he needs to mention a “brilliant young woman”, or the need to “Free Britney!”, and would definitely read the first paragraph of any 20,000-word blog on why, actually, he thinks Brie Larson is the best hero in the MCU.
I do, however, think it was notable in this day and age that only one woman ever fronted the Downing Street pandemic press conference. Covid decision-making didn’t pass the Bechdel test. The mood was months and months and months of guys who knew best standing at a podium telling the public they had it all under control. Look, you know, I’m a big advocate for this kind of positive discrimination, but hearing about the backstage bitching, the emotionalism, the cliques, the endless drama … well, like me, you may be wondering if men are really suited to these important jobs. Might they not be happier simply staying at home?
In terms of what transferable skills the key players have, it’s not immediately clear after Covid’s full spectrum disasterclass. Actually, hang on – everyone from the prime minister to the cabinet secretary to Cummings has the chaotic energy of reality TV contestants. No wonder Matt Hancock can currently be found on his second reality TV show, while Johnson reportedly got quite far down the line mulling an appearance on this year’s I’m a Celebrity.
Alas, for now we had to endure a lament from Cain that for a man of Johnson’s “skill set”, Covid was unfortunately the “wrong crisis” – a rebuke to fate for failing to furnish the Boris story with a more flattering plot device. The alternative reading is that disaster of one sort or another was guaranteed the second these guys helped elect a newspaper columnist to run a country. (Then again, Cummings is a man bizarrely obsessed with journalists, who honestly just don’t matter. I find it absolutely mind-boggling that he recently bothered putting my name on to some shitlist of his. What on earth is he doing giving one millionth of a toss one way or the other what I write? It’s some jokes about the news. Surely he should at least give the impression he has bigger fish to fry. But perhaps that’s the definitive character note – someone with a big brain who’s incapable of resisting smallness.)
For me, the most depressing thing about the revelations at the inquiry this week – and no doubt for many weeks and months to come – is that they are not really revelations. The government was horrendously incompetent, didn’t have a plan, yet still wasted a huge amount of time – and a tragic number of lives – on mad posturing, pointless turf wars or buck-passing and catastrophic infighting. The sad fact is that all of this was said AT THE TIME, and all of it was denied repeatedly by those in charge. And it was denied not just in insidery lobby briefings or to individual journalists – but live on air, to the nation, in those wretched press conferences every night.
They lied about everything, all the time, and the lies they told backstage were just the obverse of the ones they spouted front of house. Seeing inquiry witnesses feted for punchy WhatsApps now is a bit like congratulating a serial killer for switching to an energy-efficient chest freezer. I’m sure half of them will be reflecting amiably on the period on their inevitable podcasts in due course – but the British public deserve so much more, as they did at the time.
• This article was amended on 2 November 2023. Priti Patel was the only woman to front a Downing Street pandemic press conference, but she did so on several occasions, not a single one, as an earlier version of the text implied.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
