Covid inquiry won’t topple the Boris Johnson myth

FT SAYS Good morning. Boris Johnson was not a good prime minister. His government lurched all over the place on a variety of issues, and his poor decision-making made responding to the Covid pandemic harder. That’s the gist of yesterday’s evidence to the UK’s Covid inquiry. Tune in for today’s session, when there may be more revelations about the religion of the Pope and what bears really do in the woods.

Some (mildly) less facetious thoughts on the public inquiry below.

Boris Johnson’s premiership is a lot like that old gag about the 1960s: if you can remember it, you weren’t really there. His time in government exists in Conservative mythology (and some Labour demonology) as an era of rightwing government, though in reality it was an era of increased spending even before the pandemic.

If Rishi Sunak loses the next election, then for large parts of the Tory party, the comforting myth will be that had Sunak not resigned from the government in summer last year, Johnson would have triumphed against Keir Starmer and delivered an ideologically-driven, rightwing government, in contrast to the hapless and leftwing Sunak administration.

https://www.ft.com/content/ffc6ad8f-117c-4825-a37b-c77282d32719