As time goes on more and more information is starting to come out about the UK Government’s initial response to the Coronavirus pandemic. The most notable and in my view description of the world of government during the early stages of the pandemic have come from the Guardian (of all places) which in March of this year ran an article describing the panic that gripped HMG when Covid first appeared. The Guardian said that Number Ten had descended into being a bit of a ‘plague pit’ with senior staff contracting covid and being unable to carry out their duties. The Guardian also claimed, in an article that I have no hesitation in praising, that when HMG was trying to get to grips with covid, the virus had spread far more widely than either the government assumed or told the public. As someone who contracted what I believe to be covid in very early 2020, I can well believe that covid had been circulating in the UK far earlier than many in Government may have initially assumed.

Now more information about the Government’s initial response to covid is leaking out or rather being leaked out by Dominic Cummings a former senior Number Ten advisor. The leaks, in the form of Whatsapp screenshots, if true and not fake, paint a grim picture of incompetence and unpreparedness at the heart of government. Britain should have been prepared for this pandemic but it appears that there was a sort of clown world of chaos at the heart of government.

There’s an active Twitter discussion about this issue, which is changing all the time as more information comes out, which can be found on the Politics For All account via the link below. It’s something that for myself at least makes fascinating reading.

https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1405115324794650627