Published12 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingThis video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.By Chris MasonPolitical editor, BBC NewsBoris Johnson’s evidence was, for the most part, shorn of his usual performative theatrics. Sitting on the press bench in the hearing room, the contempt in which Mr Johnson was held by many of the families of the bereaved sitting metres away was obvious; sniggers of derision from some of them punctuated his early testimony. The thrust of Mr Johnson’s case – contrition, with hindsight, at his tardiness in clocking the imminent scale of the pandemic in early 2020 – was mixed with his best effort to take on the cavalry of his former colleagues who have questioned his competence and the culture of his Downing Street operation. Crude WhatsApp exchanges were framed as entirely typical of the style of many on the messaging service; indulging in the “ephemeral, pejorative, hyperbolical” as he put it. Private, internal anger at his failings was a good thing, he claimed, a “disputatious culture” better than a “quietly acquiescent” one. Two sentence siblings appeared frequently: “I can’t remember” and “I don’t know.” Claims to this end may be judged individually plausible. But their volume stood out. More on Covid and the Covid InquiryLIVE: Follow the latest updates from the Covid inquiryWhat is the UK Covid inquiry and how does it work? How inquiry is exposing deep flaws in Covid decision-making’Moronic’: Vicious Covid WhatsApps reveal No 10 battlesWhat to do if you have Covid: Can you go to work or school?The UK’s governance structures – the wiring of where power lies and who takes decisions – also featured, and there was a parallel here with what the former health secretary Matt Hancock said last week. Mr Johnson felt devolution didn’t work during the pandemic because mixed messages were sent, depending on where you were in the UK, because devolved governments did different things, at different times, from the government at Westminster.He suggested the Public Health Act 1984 had a consequence unforeseen at the time of its passing nearly 40 years ago, because the devolution that was to follow meant lots of pandemic powers rested away from Westminster.What should now happen, he argued, was that this act should be amended to discount pandemics from it.Some will see this as a self-serving argument for a former prime minister to make, perhaps keen on hoarding power at the centre. Others will insist at a time of emergency clarity is key and it was absent during Covid.In big picture terms, Mr Johnson sought to remind the inquiry of his central role as a pandemic prime minister; judging trade offs of a colossal nature; confronting a scenario without modern precedent. The question not asked explicitly but hanging over the inquiry is this: would the UK have coped better had there been a different prime minister? Mr Johnson will fear evidence is already accumulating to suggest the answer to that is yes. We have now seen and heard his first stab at trying to take on that hunch. He is back on Thursday morning to face more questions.More on this storyI should have twigged Covid threat earlier – JohnsonPublished16 hours agoWhat is the UK Covid inquiry and how does it work?Published37 minutes ago

Published7 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Chris MasonPolitical editorAs two of Boris Johnson’s closest aides during the pandemic – Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain – prepare to give evidence at the Covid inquiry later, our political editor Chris Mason reflects on what we’ve heard so far.Shambolic dysfunction in Downing Street, with thousands upon thousands of lives at stake.That is the claim, to the Covid inquiry, from some of those who worked very closely alongside Boris Johnson during the pandemic.They are painting a picture of chaos, and of a prime minister they claim was temperamentally unsuited to the scale of the challenge the pandemic confronted him with. We will see how Mr Johnson and others respond to this in the coming weeks. Follow live: Cain and Cummings face inquiryThis inquiry is giving us a look into the workings of government, with the bonnet up. And, bluntly, it is not a pretty sight: a health emergency, the liberty and education of millions curtailed, the economic future of the country on the line too.Learning lessons afterwards is what a public inquiry is all about – and the UK, in modern times, had never been confronted with anything like Covid-19.For those of us poring over the evidence now gushing towards us, there is a clear risk of hindsight bias. We know now what came next; we didn’t – and they didn’t – know then.What stands out to me so far is a combination of factors which affords us a unique and real time rolling insight into the moods, whims, frustrations and anger of key players at the time.The pandemic, with its need for social distance, coincided with a written communications tool – WhatsApp – becoming a mainstream platform for communication.But not just any communication: an informal, minute-by-minute written down substitution for what might otherwise have been said out loud ad-libbed remarks, lost to the ether moments after their utterance.Instead, as patchy as it might be in the places, we get a glimpse of the tone and mood of senior figures, and not just their point of view. It is often many of the things many of us can be some of the time: unvarnished, crude and shorn of the usual gloss applied to communications for public consumption.And it’s fascinating. We are getting a sense of the organisational oddities, human failings and frailties, and decision-making processes of those whom fate chose to be in positions of power when the pandemic struck – and so compelled to make decisions of a magnitude none of them can have anticipated ever having to make.And there is plenty more to come – Boris Johnson’s former director of communications, Lee Cain, and his former chief of staff, Dominic Cummings.All of this matters, for three reasons: the accountability of individuals; the lessons future governments can learn; and, also, the implications for the politics of today.Because after we have heard from the Downing Street advisers, it will be the turn, before Christmas, to hear from the politicians.Yes, Boris Johnson, but also, too, Rishi Sunak – the chancellor then, the prime minister now.The electorate will be reminded now of events then, and decisions then, which he took.And a final thought: given the unprecedented scale of what confronted the government then, how much of the chaos we are now getting a glimpse of would have been likely under any prime minister, or collection of senior individuals in government? And how much was a direct consequence of Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Dominic Cummings and others, and the relationships between them?It is a question that will always be – to a great extent – unanswerable.But it is one worth keeping in mind as the inquiry progresses.Listen to the Covid Inquiry Podcast on BBC SoundsMore on this storyJohnson can’t lead, top official said over CovidPublished11 hours ago