The timing was uncanny. At the exact moment that Rishi Sunak was becoming tetchy in his “emergency” press conference about his Rwanda plans this week, Boris Johnson was losing his temper at the Covid inquiry.
Just as the Prime Minister bristled at questions about his authority and leadership, his predecessor was furrowing an angry brow at repeated questions about his own judgement during the pandemic.
Their tunes were slightly different, but the song remained the same: an irritated defensiveness when challenged on the basic flaws in their policymaking and their personal performance.
Johnson must have been pleased that his own toddler tantrum got less media attention than Sunak’s scratchiness, not least because it seems his bigger strategy is to contrast his own record with that of his successor, leaving open a possible comeback one day.
The derailing by the Covid inquiry of that possible return to the political front line was perhaps why Johnson got so agitated when asked about his repeated dismissals of the plight of the elderly.
In perhaps the most telling exchange of his entire two days of testimony, Johnson was forced to sit in silence as lead counsel Hugo Keith methodically presented him with evidence of his own words.
“Page 245: The Prime Minister…begins to argue for letting it all rip. Saying yes, there will be more casualties but so be it — ‘they have had a good innings.’ [Page] 439: ‘we should let this rip a bit’. [Page] 150: ‘He is obsessed with older people accepting their fate …’.”
Johnson huffed and puffed his annoyance and shook his head, but Keith was relentless. “…[Page] 230: ‘… obsessed with the average age of death being 82’ …Which is longer, you believe, than the average life expectancy… ‘Get Covid live longer’, you said.”
When the lawyer declared these were his “secretly held” views, Johnson lashed out. He claimed those words – his own words remember – did not “do justice …to my thoughts, my feelings, to say that we were remotely reconciled to fatalities across the country or that I believed that it was acceptable to let it rip”.
Yet although Johson said he was simply airing those sentiments as a way to test the consensus of those around him who wanted a second lockdown in 2020, that defence sounded barely credible. Similarly, while he said the phrase “let it rip” was mere “common parlance”, and “this is exactly what you’d expect me to be talking about”, few would have been fooled.
That didn’t stop Johnson from trying to do the fooling. In his newly released written statement, he denied that he had used the callous phrase that has upset bereaved families just as much as his “Partygate” conduct: “let the bodies pile high”.
As ever though, the truth is not simple. Although he could question Dominic Cummings’ account of this phrase, his trusted aide, Eddie Lister, actually claimed in his own evidence: “I recall the PM saying in September 2020 that he would rather ‘let the bodies pile high’ than impose another lockdown.”
It wasn’t just his characteristic obfuscation that Johnson displayed to the inquiry. He also tried to relitigate “Partygate” itself, declaring reports of lockdown breaches in Downing Street were “a million miles from the reality” and “absolutely absurd”.
Sadly, even his two big “emotional” moments during his evidence felt unconvincing. On day one, he appeared to well up when talking about “that whole tragic, tragic year” of 2020. One day two, he seemed to fight back tears as he described his experience in intensive care. “I did care, and I continue to care passionately about it.”
Unfortunately Johnson’s tears seemed more crocodile than convincing.
It was not just the way the taps were turned on and off quickly. It was also the preamble to the second incident, when he said, “I haven’t talked about this before”, telegraphing the “emotion” to come.
As it happens, his anecdote about his time in intensive care seemed another justification for his remarks about the elderly. “I saw around me a lot of people who were not actually elderly, and in fact they were middle-aged men and they were quite like me, and some of us were going to make it and some of us weren’t.”
And the more authentic reaction came when Johnson snapped at the lawyer for the bereaved families, after he cut through the spin that the UK’s place in the “league table” of deaths was not so bad after all.
Showing clearly that the UK was second only to Italy in its excess deaths, when comparable countries and population densities were taken into account, Pete Weatherby KC did a better job than most TV interviewers who allow Johnson to run down the clock with non-answers.
“I’m putting to you some cold steel of evidence.” But when Johnson replied “I don’t believe that your evidence stacks up”, the audible gasp in the room from families of the bereaved told its own story. It was a valuable counterpoint to all the bluster about Britain having a “world beating” performance in the pandemic.
There are some who suggest that this week’s appearance by Johnson was a waste of time, and by implication so too is the whole Covid inquiry. On the contrary, for many families as well as our politics, it was invaluable in finally putting the former PM on the spot, and exposed central issues of system failure as well as his own leadership failures.
While many elements of the state (scientists, civil servants, the NHS as well as politicians) clearly made mistakes when first confronted by the awful virus, by the summer they had largely got a grip on it. Yet it was Johnson himself who didn’t keep up.
Referring to the science-free Eat Out To Help Out scheme (dubbed by chief medical officer Chris Whitty “eat out to help the virus”), one scientist said it showed the difference between taking a foot off the brake and slamming a foot on the accelerator.
Johnson had a supremely difficult job of trying to balance health with economic and education concerns. Yet the image of the toad of Toad Hall of our recent politics trying to speed recklessly along and only belatedly taking the right course, is perhaps the overall upshot of the past few days.
For all the tears and testiness, the old tricks just didn’t seem to work this week. When the former PM tried, right at the end of his session, to tell inquiry chair Lady Hallett to focus on the China origins of the virus, she had a neat putdown: “Mr Johnson, you set my terms of reference; so I’m afraid I can’t go there.”
Despite all that, will the Tory party “go there” again, and one day give Johnson the comeback he so clearly craves? The ex-PM appears not to have learned much from the pandemic or his downfall, but that hasn’t stopped some MPs from thinking that Sunak is a failed upgrade.
United in tetchiness, yet divided by their views of each other’s fitness for office, they may come across to the voters as more similar than they realise. The Rwanda row may have buried the bad news of Johnson’s Covid inquiry performance, but neither is an edifying image of the Conservatives in power.
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