The English language is a famously tricky one to master. French may have its genders and Greek a different alphabet, but no one does irregular verbs like us. Take an example from this week:
I regretfully seek a judicial review
You are a lefty lawyer foiling efforts to crack down on illegal migration
You can see that this trips up even native speakers.
Yesterday, the government confirmed its intention to launch a judicial review against the Covid-19 Inquiry, in order to avoid having to provide it with Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages (as well as other records) for the requested period.
However, the former prime minister today wrote to Inquiry chair Baroness Hallet, in which he said he would provide all unredacted material directly to the Inquiry, including that from his old phone, which covered messages prior to May 2021.
There is, as ever, an element of politics and public relations going on here. Johnson is making clear he has nothing to hide, is happy to cooperate, to the extent that he is willing to bypass a Cabinet Office taking the Inquiry to court to prevent such an outcome.
On BBC Question Time last night, science minister George Freeman defended the government’s decision but also acknowledged it was “quite likely” that the High Court would back Baroness Hallett. Which is not the most robust line to take I’ve ever heard.
For more on the case, no lesser authority than Sir Jonathan Jones, former head of the Government Legal Service, who resigned in 2020 in protest against the Internal Markets Bill and the government’s threat to break international law, has written a must-read blog for the Institute for Government.
As our Political Editor Nicholas Cecil reports, the legal argument really boils down to this: the Cabinet Office says it should not have to hand over material deemed “unambiguously irrelevant” to the inquiry by government-appointed senior lawyers. But Baroness Hallett says such decisions are for her inquiry team.
I’ve two brief reflections. First, this shows the difficulty of conducting government by WhatsApp. Of course, technology develops and lockdown necessitated swift changes to how Whitehall operated. But high-quality record keeping is even more essential during times of crisis, and we know from reporting that ministers, advisors and officials were painfully aware that their actions would be judged by an inquiry after the pandemic.
Second, the politics. I’m sceptical as to how much the public is following this story. I mean, the pandemic is already two prime ministers and several fixed-penalty notices ago. My sense is that most people are relieved the whole thing is over, think the vaccine rollout went pretty well and that the rest was a bit haphazard, but the government is granted a fair amount of benefit of the doubt. Unless the government really does have something major to hide we don’t already know about, they just end up looking a bit shifty.
In the comment pages, Emily Sheffield calls the government soft on vaping – and urges ministers to ban disposable ones entirely. Jonathan Prynn says British business is still too much of a man’s world. While I absolutely do not have a go at Beyoncé, let alone her fans, but you could not pay me to go to a stadium concert.
And finally, some of London’s greatest institutions, from the Tate and Shakespeare’s Globe to the Savoy are going all out this weekend.
Whatever you choose to do, have a good one.
