Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What’s the point of the Covid inquiry?

Martin Reynolds at the Covid Inquiry. (Credit: Getty Images)

Was anything in Martin Reynolds’s evidence to the Covid inquiry surprising today? We already knew that Boris Johnson had a sketchy hold of the details when Covid emerged in early 2020, something that the PM’s former private secretary gave us more on when he admitted that there was a period of ten days where the Prime Minister wasn’t briefed on Covid at all.

We already know that Simon Case liked to mouth off on WhatsApp about how unimpressed he was by, well, everyone, and how it was all a bit unfair. We got more of those missives from the Cabinet Secretary, along with a contrasting exchange between Reynolds and the inquiry’s lead counsel Hugo Keith about how the civil servant mysteriously turned on the disappearing messages function on his WhatsApp group with the Prime Minister – just two days before the Covid inquiry was announced. This evidence session also gave Reynolds the opportunity to apologise for the infamous ‘BYOB’ party in the No.

Isabel Hardman
Written by
Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

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