42 things we learned at the Covid Inquiry this week

This week, Boris Johnson gave evidence at the UK’s official Covid Inquiry. Here’s the 21 things we discovered about his time as prime minister during the pandemic, and the 21 things he claimed not to remember. 

1. Johnson didn’t think his decision-making on further introduction of lockdown measures in December 2020, was influenced by the press or backbench MPs. 
2. He believed his government did its “level best” in dealing with the pandemic. 
3. Sometimes during the pandemic “too many meetings were too male-dominated”.
4. Whitehall “underestimated the scale and pace of the challenge”. 
5. The images and reports from Italy in the early months of the pandemic “really rattled” Johnson. 
6. Johnson said he should have “twigged”, and his government should have collectively twigged “much sooner” how much impact the pandemic would have. 
7. According to Johnson, he didn’t take a long holiday when he was at Chevening in February 2020 and “there was a lot going on”, including phone calls with Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
8. Johnson assumed that Eat Out to Help Out had been discussed with Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, and the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance, who have both stated otherwise. 
9. The version of events that has entered the public consciousness about partygate “is a million miles from what actually happened in Number 10”. Johnson called it a “travesty of the truth”. 
10. He had “no other tool” for Covid other than a lockdown in March 2020. 
11. While appearing to tear up as he spoke about his own time in intensive care with the virus, Johnson claimed: “To say that I didn’t care about the suffering that was being inflicted on the country is simply not right.”
12. It was, he insisted, “total rubbish” to say that he was indecisive and dithered over announcing a second lockdown in the Autumn of 2020. 
13. By 5 February 2020, Johnson claimed he was “more or less in virus fighting mode”. 
14. Johnson said he didn’t back a “let it rip” strategy during the pandemic, insisting he had aimed to “save human life at all ages”. 
15. Johnson told staff “we should have thought about how Number 10 parties would look”. 
16. He regretted the “hurt and offence” some of his language about elderly populations dying from Covid had caused. 
17. He thought a regional approach to lockdown – the tier system – was “worth a try” in autumn 2020. 
18. Johnson apologised for describing long Covid as “bollocks” in October 2020, but avoided denying that he thought it was similar to “Gulf War Syndrome”. 
19. The argumentative culture of Downing Street was “creatively useful”. 
20. In September 2020, Johnson said “everyone says rule of 6 so unfair, punishing the young, but F**K YOU Daily Mail – look this is all about stopping deaths”, according to Patrick Vallance’s diaries. The Daily Mail currently employs Johnson to write a weekly column. 
21. Johnson blamed high infection rates in Wales during the pandemic on “the singing and the obesity”, according to another diary entry by Vallance. 

And here are the 21 things that Boris Johnson said he didn’t, or couldn’t, remember: 

1. A conversation with Cabinet Secretary Simon Case about whether or not Johnson’s WhatsApps should be disclosed. 
2. Whether or not the decision to lock down in November 2020 was made by a Covid ministerial committee or by cabinet. 
3. That Simon Case, the permanent secretary in Number 10, WhatsApp’d Johnson on 2 July to say that lots of “top drawer people” had refused to come and work at Downing Street because of the “toxic reputation” of the prime minister’s operation. 
4. When it became obvious that test and trace wasn’t going to work. 
5. That he expressed scepticism about the possible number of deaths. 
6. The proportion of his daily red box that focused on coronavirus on the Monday of February half-term in 2020, when he was staying at Chevening. 
7. Whether he was told that a Cobra meeting, which he hadn’t chaired, had been informed that the reasonable worst case scenario was looking close to becoming the reality.
8. Whether he pushed back against the notion of “don’t go too early”.
9. A debate in early March 2020 with his advisors about whether he should stop saying “business as usual”. 
10. Whether a private meeting he had with Evgeny Lebedev, the proprietor of the Evening Standard and the Independent, in mid-March 2020, was “Covid-related”, while claiming he was “absolutely certain it must have been”. 
11. The delay in setting up regular meetings with the devolved administrations through then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove. 
12. Conversations with Simon Case about problems in the operation of Number 10, in part because of senior adviser Dominic Cummings’ behaviour. 
13. The message sent on a group chat Johnson was in about Helen MacNamara stating that Number 10 was “dodging stilettos from that c**t”. Johnson said he had recently phoned her to apologise. 
14. That he said he didn’t want to replace health secretary Matt Hancock in the summer of 2020 because he wanted to keep him as a “sacrifice for the inquiry”, as claimed by Cummings.
15. That both Cabinet Secretaries, Case and Mark Sedwill, advised Johnson to sack Matt Hancock. 
16. Anders Tegnell, the state epidemiologist for Sweden, making any particular comments about tier systems vs lockdowns at a Zoom meeting on 20 September 2020. 
17. That Hancock knew on 12 October 2020 that the tier system wouldn’t work, as he claimed at the Inquiry last week. 
18. That Rishi Sunak, then Chancellor, suggested in a meeting that he would resign if there was another lockdown. 
19. Specific conversations about whether it would be better for England and Wales to act in a more coordinated way on lockdowns and the Welsh firebreak. 
20. Conversations about Number 10 not wanting to “shift an inch” on curfew in October 2020, as stated in WhatsApps between Hancock and then minister for state in the Department for Health and Social Care, Helen Whately. 
21. That Priti Patel, then home secretary, raised concerns in 2020 about domestic abuse not being explicitly mentioned among the exemptions for the “stay at home” order.