The Covid Inquiry Is a Shameless Cover-Up

Ahead of Rishi Sunak’s appearance at the Covid Inquiry, Matt Ridley, writing in the Telegraph, offers a rare defense of politicians, arguing that they have been unjustly held responsible for the errors of quangos and agencies. Here’s how his article begins:

On Monday, Rishi Sunak will appear at the Covid Inquiry. It barely matters what he says because it is as predictable as sunrise that he will be pilloried for the mistakes of others, that being the modern purpose of politicians, it seems.

In his own appearance, Boris Johnson said that he was “very much impressed and dependent upon the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Adviser, both of whom are outstanding experts in their field”. Weren’t we all? In those early months of 2020, most of us trusted Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty to find the best way through the impending pandemic. We were glad to “follow the science”.

Yet now we have to listen to a lawyer, Hugo Keith KC, tell us with the benefit of three years of hindsight, that the entire pandemic was all the fault of politicians.

The virus, the Chinese regime and the scientists are spotless in their reputations, it seems. Had Sunak and Johnson acted differently, then apparently almost nobody would have died.

This is claptrap. No country – not Sweden, not Japan, not Outer Mongolia – escaped the pandemic. Britain suffered about as many waves of the virus and excess deaths per head of population as France, Germany and Italy, and rather better than Spain. Many places that did well in the first wave did badly in later waves.

Not that Mr. Keith knows this: He shamelessly told Mr. Johnson that Britain had one of the worst pandemics in Europe and had to be corrected by the former Prime Minister.

Never in the history of Britain have politicians so clearly abandoned their own policies and instincts at the behest of the technocrats. This was made plain day after day as the scientists took to the airwaves and stood behind podiums, saying nothing different from the politicians who echoed and praised them.

Worth reading in full.