The Pascoe emails: London to be locked down until Spring

The £12 billion splurge of taxpayer cash into a test-and-trace system meant that due process was suspended. Cash was spent without question, shortcuts were taken, and basic questions were dodged. For example: was contact tracing ever going to stop a virus which, as we knew as early as March, left no symptoms in many of those it infects?

As well, in the rush, mates were hired pretty quickly. Today’s Sunday Times focuses on a scandal that has been brewing for some time now: the way that friends of well-connected Tories have been looped in on the biggest Covid projects. Some are on rich contracts, others as unpaid advisers. If you’re a lobbyist, like Portland chairman George Pascoe Watson, you don’t need the money. The ability to boast about close government contacts is gold dust. The Sunday Times calls it a “chumocracy” but the truth is worse: unlike David Cameron, Boris Johnson isn’t very social and has hardly any chums, which makes him more vulnerable to hiring – wholesale – other people, chums and all.