The great villain of Covid is China. Not Matt Hancock

The Telegraph has a hell of a scoop with its lockdown files, aka Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps. It’s a major public interest story. We see with increasing clarity now how our government flapped and flailed and obfuscated as ministers and senior officials desperately tried to figure out the deadliness of Covid and what to do about it. There’ll be more recriminations in the coming days and rightly so.

But if we really want to be angry at something, and we do, shouldn’t we also direct our indignation at another government? One which, US intelligent agencies believe, probably let the Covid-19 virus escape from one of its laboratories, covered the crisis up and let the virus spread across the world, then lied about it for years? I’m talking about China, obviously. 

FBI Director Christopher Wray has just confirmed that his bureau believes the virus ‘most likely’ originated in a ‘Chinese government-controlled lab’ – though its most damning evidence remains classified.