Top officials called Johnson’s No 10 ‘mad’ and ‘poisonous’, Covid inquiry hears

Britain's cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, Simon Case, told Boris Johnson he was having trouble recruiting people ‘because of the toxic reputation of his operation’. Photograph: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images

The two most senior civil servants in the UK exchanged messages describing those inside Boris Johnson’s Downing Street as “poisonous”, “mad” and unfit to run the country, the Covid inquiry has heard.

“I’ve never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country,” Simon Case, then head official in the Cabinet Office, wrote in July 2020 to Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary.