Cameron tells Covid Inquiry to blame ‘groupthink’

Everyone giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry has their own corner to defend. And every ex-prime minister has a part of their premiership that they spend the rest of their life talking about and trying to justify.

For David Cameron, it was his public spending cuts. Experts blame them for the health service being in very poor shape when the pandemic arrived. The former prime minister had his session before the inquiry this morning, and unsurprisingly he was keen to argue that these spending cuts weren’t just unavoidable, but essential to ensure the country’s economy was in a robust shape so it could afford to respond to crises including pandemics. He said:

Our whole economic strategy was about safeguarding and strengthening the economy and the nation’s finances so we could cope with whatever crisis hit us next. And I think that’s incredibly important because there’s no resilience without economic resilience, without financial resilience, without fiscal resilience.