Dominic Cummings supergrass

 Watching the Select Committee session on BBC Parliament yesterday was like observing the interrogation of a supergrass: you knew that the evidence was valuable, but you had to assess it with the witness's own motivations in mind. Chairman Greg Clark was firm in his conduct of the business, clarifying Cummings' often vague recollections, pinning down dates, exact words and names of those present at key events. 

The early impression gained was of a man promoted beyond his level of competence. Cummings had been an effective enforcer for the Brexit campaign but on his own admission yesterday, he is not smart and does not have any scientific understanding - hardly the man to be a chief assistant to the prime minister of the United Kingdom. This impression was confirmed by Sir Peter Bottomley on PM later that day. The Father of the House (and husband of a former Health Secretary) was unequivocal: he would not have appointed Cummings if he had been PM.

Much of the evidence had already been intimated by Cummings' Tweets. However, the outright condemnation of Matt Hancock, the current Health Secretary, as a liar came as a shock in those exalted surroundings. It is possible that the false statements which Cummings cited were based on civil service briefings - something the committee needs to get to the bottom of - but, while shifting the blame for lying onto officials, it would expose Hancock as an incompetent cipher. In fact, no minister and few civil servants came out well from the testimony, apart from Chancellor Sunak whom Cummings went out of his way to praise for his response to the Covid-19 emergency.

The session confirmed that the government did nothing during the crucial first eight weeks of the spread of the virus, even after it was declared as a dangerous pandemic by the WHO half-way through that period. This is a period which I believe the committee should have probed more deeply, and perhaps will do so in later sessions. There was also cnfirmation of dither in early March, an early laissez-faire attitude based on a misunderstanding of the concept of herd immunity being replaced by panic.

Cummings was scathing about the quality of senior civil servants as well as politicians from the PM down. He may well be right. However, the solutinn would appear to be improvement in the recruitment, remuneration and promotion procedures of the service, winding back the "reforms" of Thatcher and Heseltine. The alternative, of more direct appointments of the like of Cummings, would clearly be disastrous.