Cummings’ insults are petty distraction from grim lockdown lessons
The originator of the phrase is lost to the vagaries of time, but talk to enough people in the pubs of Westminster about the inner workings of British politics and sooner or later someone will offer it up.
“The only difference between Westminster and The Thick of It,” they’ll say, referring to the foul-mouthed BBC comedy, “is that nobody in The Thick of It walks around saying ‘this is exactly like The Thick of It’.”
Yesterday’s slightly gratuitous hearing of the Covid-19 inquiry certainly offered up its fair share of swearing, forcing the broadcasters carrying it live into making rapidly-repeated apologies.
But whether we actually got any closer to identifying what went wrong within our government during the pandemic, however, is still up for debate.
The most valuable outcome of the Covid inquiry would be a ‘lessons learned’ sheet that could inform work to prepare for the next global pandemic, should it arrive.
So far, what we’ve seen has been a borderline medieval exercise in sticking various figures in the stocks for a day to yell at them.
But if all we learn from the inquiry is that we shouldn’t re-elect Boris Johnson the next time there are a few suspicious coughs on the Wuhan metro, then it is unlikely to add much to the sum of human knowledge; or protect any future lives that are threatened by such a virus or similar menace.
Chewing over the politics – who said what to whom and when – is at this point a total waste of time.
The inquiry has revealed, in great detail, the impact on children, particularly those from disadvantaged communities, during lockdown. We have heard about the tragic errors related to care homes.
Let’s hope that the genuinely important parts of this inquiry are what we remember; not whether Dominic Cummings can get a bit sweary.