Boris: lockdown was the only option
Boris Johnson insisted there was “no other tool” than a full lockdown to control the virus in March 2020, as he began his much-anticipated two-day testimony at the Covid Inquiry today.
While the primary aim of the inquiry is to learn lessons from the pandemic, not to apportion blame, it was easy to forget this as the former PM came to the stand. Johnson made his best attempt to defend the heavy criticism he has come under from former scientific advisers, political aides and fellow ministers throughout the inquiry for his apparent inability to make any firm decision over lockdown policy.
Johnson admitted that he “should have twigged” how serious the virus was sooner though he defended not chairing five Cobra meetings in early 2020. On this lack of a sense of urgency, he also managed to fit in a swipe at the opposition: he was hardly alone in underestimating its seriousness at this time, he reasoned. Indeed, he pointed out that he wasn’t even asked about Covid during PMQs over this period.
As for the so-called flip-flopping, he blamed this on the evolving science. On the question of whether the ex-PM was too slow to impose the first full lockdown on 23 March 2020, he pointed out that his key scientific advisers were not pushing for a full lockdown all the way up until mid-March. The Sage advisory body didn’t realise either how fast the virus was advancing, he insisted.
Johnson expressed frustration at these “flip-flopping” accusations too, noting what a difficult decision imposing a lockdown was to make. “At every stage, I was weighing the massive costs of what we were doing to people’s psyches, to people’s life chances,” he told the inquiry.
Which prompted a rare interruption from the Inquiry Chair Baroness Hallett. Some in government were advocating for no lockdown at all, she reminded him. ”Did you consider the arguments to say you should never go that far?”
It was the moment many have been waiting for. Indeed, the inquiry has repeatedly drawn criticism for focusing too heavily on the smaller details of lockdown and petty internal squabbles while failing to get to the heart of the matter: was lockdown the right strategy at all?
Yet Johnson shied away from her question. “I’m afraid to say at that stage I gave it pretty short shrift because I thought that my job was to protect human life and that is the number one duty of government”.
“I thought that if the NHS was overwhelmed, then the risk of truly tragic scenes in the UK was very real,” he added.
His firmness that a full-blown lockdown couldn’t have been avoided is perhaps surprising. Even Michael Gove has conceded that introducing a lockdown was “difficult” for Johnson because it went against his “political outlook”.
Prior to 23 March 2020, the government had introduced a set of voluntary measures, including asking the public to stay at home for 14 days if they – or anyone in their household – had Covid symptoms. They were also advised to stop non-essential contact, and avoid all unnecessary travel. It was thought that reducing social interactions by 75% would be enough to stop the epidemic growing. Some now wonder whether those earlier, less restrictive measures could have sufficed. Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, told the inquiry last month that it initially looked like the public were firmly adhering to these measures. But with only a few days of data to study, the scientists were uncertain whether it would be enough in the longer term.
We can but speculate what would have happened if we had stuck to them. Anti-lockdowners are keen to point out that Sweden – which relied on voluntary measures – had a significantly lower excess death rate than the UK. But demographic differences mean Sweden can hardly provide a blueprint for what would have happened in the UK.
The most important thing now is that we pay due attention to all of the short and long-term impacts of lockdown.
Anne Longfield, who was children’s commissioner for England during Covid, has accused Johnson’s government of making a “terrible mistake” over schools, with lasting impact on children.
Schools, she insists, should have been the “last to close and first to reopen”. Instead, pubs and hairdressers, for example, were able to re-open before them after the first lockdown. This was something that was repeated in Scotland later in the pandemic.
It’s crucial now that we scrutinise the degree to which those most impacted by lockdown restrictions were properly factored into pandemic decision-making.
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