COVID Memories

When Dominic Cummings was an adviser to the Prime Minister, he mocked journalists for focussing on stories which enthralled Westminster and political nerds, but were of relatively little interest to anyone else. It is ironic that he is in danger now of doing the same thing by raking over the ashes of Government policy and decision-making on COVID from the early part of last year.

Most voters want to look forward and not back, so I suspect Cummings’ appearance before a joint meeting of the Health & Social Care and Science & Technology Committees on Wednesday won’t be as unsettling for the Prime Minister as some commentators suggest.

There are two other reasons why Dominic Cummings’ COVID account may fall a little flat.

First, while some polling suggests that less than 40% of people think the Prime Minister tells the truth, even fewer people think Dominic Cummings does. People probably wouldn’t want to buy a used car from either of them, but the Prime Minster is at least trusted more than his former adviser.

Second, is it really so revelatory to assert, as Dominic Cummings does, that the Government was committed to pursuing a policy of herd immunity to fight COVID, before changing course in favour of a lockdown? 

After all, last year over January and February the Prime Minister reportedly missed five consecutive emergency meetings to discuss COVID; on March 3rd he boasted of shaking hands with COVID patients on a hospital visit; from March 10th-13th over 250,000 people were allowed to attend the Cheltenham Festival; on March 11th 52,000 people were allowed to attend the Liverpool V Atletico Madrid Champions League match at Anfield, including 3,000 fans from Spain, which at that time had the sixth highest number of COVID cases in the world. None of the above seems incompatible with a herd immunity policy.

In the weeks leading up to mid-March last year a number of meetings and events in my diary were cancelled as a precaution against COVID. I was, therefore, half-expecting the Cabinet Office Business Briefing of March 16th in the magnificent Locarno Suite of the Foreign Office to be cancelled too, especially as it was due to be attended by a few hundred people. But it went ahead, as planned (though there were quite a few empty seats).

I got home that night and switched on the TV to see the Prime Minister tell us that we should all work from home if we can with immediate effect, avoid non-essential contact with others and stop all unnecessary travel. A week later he announced the first lockdown. The lockdowns generally commanded high levels of public support and have now given way to a popular and successful vaccination programme that has delivered 60.6m doses and fully vaccinated 34% of the population.

Perhaps what we shall learn from the reaction to Dominic Cummings’ appearance in Parliament on Wednesday is that voters may forgive and forget a multitude of errors made in a fast-moving crisis, but they celebrate and remember the one big thing – in this case, the vaccination programme – that will rescue them from its clutches.