Even at the height of his popularity, Boris Johnson routinely avoided close questioning – to the extent of once hiding in a fridge to dodge a TV inquisitor. The former UK prime minister is likely to be dreading next week’s appearance at the Covid inquiry. And he probably should.
It is no exaggeration to say that events on Wednesday and Thursday at the inquiry’s repurposed office building in Paddington, west London, could help define the post-power image and legacy of Johnson, and very possibly not for the good.
This most congenitally elusive of politicians, who thrived in the one-question-at-a-time discourse of the Commons but was deliberately shielded from detailed media interviews, faces at least 12 hours of questioning by one of the country’s top barristers, Hugo Keith KC.
All this will be done under oath, in the glare of attention from the media and bereaved relatives, and in a detail that will not be lost on Johnson, using an inquiry template set up by the then prime minister himself.
When, in May 2021, Johnson announced a public inquiry into the pandemic, his decision that it would start taking evidence no earlier than spring the following year was widely seen as an attempt to kick the issue into the political long grass.
Two and a half years on, we are now deep into that grass, and Johnson, rather than contemplating his path towards a second term in No 10, is instead a much-discredited former prime minister and ex-MP.
Now he faces a possible demolition job in one of the few policy areas to which he and his allies still cling: that on Covid he “got the big calls right”.
Allies of Johnson say his approach will be to accept some mistakes happened, and to take responsibility, rather than shift the blame to others. At the same time he will argue for areas he does view as a success, such as the vaccine rollout and the pace at which the UK economy reopened.
He is also expected to stress his role as prime minister in balancing the competing claims put to him, and to point to ways the structure of government could be improved for a future pandemic.
Johnson has spent months preparing for these two days, poring over thousands of pages of evidence put to him by the inquiry. While he has not seen every document, the expectation is that next week will focus more on the machinery of government rather than more revelations about personality clashes.
Presenting his case will be a tricky moment for Johnson. The current module of the inquiry covers decision-making at the top of government, and the spotlight shone so far by other witnesses into Johnson’s Downing Street has been stark and unforgiving.
Listening to not just avowed Johnson foes such as Dominic Cummings but a range of officials, civil servants and ministers, even those sympathetic to him, leaves the definite impression of a prime minister barely capable of making any calls at all, whether right or wrong, instead buffeting chaotically on the currents of others’ opinions.
The direct…
2023-12-02 02:27:46
Source from www.theguardian.com