London: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson s inept handling of the COVID pandemic led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, and officials even feared he would ask to be injected with the virus on television to show it was benign, his former chief adviser said.
With almost 128,000 deaths, the United Kingdom has the world s fifth highest official COVID-19 toll, far higher than the government s initial worst-case estimates of only 20,000.
During seven hours of explosive testimony to a parliamentary committee, Dominic Cummings told lawmakers Johnson was like a shopping cart that could not be guided, and that it was it was “crackers” that someone like him should be prime minister.
“Everybody was screaming, on quarantine – Have a policy, and set it out clearly and stick to it! ,” Cummings said.
“But nobody could find a way around the problem of the prime minister – just like a shopping trolley, smashing around from one side of the aisle to the other.”
Asked about Cummings s criticisms at a weekly question-and-answer session in parliament, Johnson said nobody could credibly accuse him or his government of complacency.
“We have worked flat out to minimise loss of life,” he said, without directly addressing many of the claims of the man who had been his closest adviser before an acrimonious split late last year, and who personally witnessed many of his actions.
Cummings s evidence gave an alarming insight into the heart of the British government as it grappled with the onset of what would become the most devastating public health crisis in a century.
Britain was completely unprepared, and Johnson s government lacked plans, brains, urgency and leadership, he said.
As danger loomed in February 2020, many ministers were away on ski holidays. Johnson initially dismissed the new virus as a scare story, Cummings said.
He said officials saw Johnson s attitude as “Don t worry about it, and I m going to get (Chief Medical Adviser) Chris Whitty to inject me live on TV with coronavirus”.
“When the public needed us most, the government failed,” Cummings said. “Tens of thousands of people died who didn t need to die.”
Johnson subsequently caught COVID-19 early in the pandemic, and was moved to intensive care in hospital, where he received litres of oxygen. He later said plans had been prepared to announce his death.
Cummings cast the state as woefully disorganised, dominated by “groupthink”, and run by ministers such as Health Secretary Matt Hancock who, he said, should be sacked for lying to the public and the government.
Johnson s spokesman said the prime minister had full confidence in Hancock.
Cummings s attacks have so far failed to dent Johnson s popularity, but his testimony is likely to form the broad lines of scrutiny of a public inquiry next year into the response to COVID-19.
Cummings, the strategist behind the 2016 Brexit campaign and Johnson s landslide election win in 2019, left Downing Street late last year, carrying his personal belongings in a box, after falling out with the prime minister.
He said the West had failed during the crisis, and that British officials had resisted the idea that they should follow the example of Asian countries in locking the country down. Reuters
