Boris Johnson warned that 'we are too s**t to get our act together' as the country battled with the coronavirus pandemic.
Details of the chaos in Downing Street have been revealed in the bombshell diaries of top scientist Sir Patrick Vallance. The former Chief Scientific Adviser kept a nightly record on the Government’s handling of the pandemic.
As he appeared at the Covid Inquiry today, extracts from his notebooks were made public. The diaries revealed a gloomy Mr Johnson asked if "we are licked as a species" after returning from a Battle of Britain memorial event, where he was distressed by seeing people in masks.
The note from September 2020 said the PM asked: "Is it because of the great libertarian nation we are that it spreads so much. Maybe we are licked as a species’... ‘We are too s*** to get our act together.’"
Other entries from Sir Patrick's diaries include multiple examples of Mr Johnson being "bamboozled" or "confused" by science. He told the Inquiry that the ex-PM wasn't unique among world leaders in struggling to understand complicated concepts but it was "hard work" to make sure he understood.
One of Sir Patrick's diary entries from May 4, 2020 said: "Late afternoon meeting with the PM on schools. My God, this is complicated. Models will not provide the answer. PM is clearly bamboozled."
Other extracts, also written in May 2020, said: "PM asking whether we've overdone it on the lethality of this disease. He swings between optimism pessimism, and then this. PM still confused on different types of test. He holds it in his head for a session and then it goes."
In June, Sir Patrick wrote: "Watching the PM get his head round stats is awful. He finds relative and absolute risk almost impossible to understand."
His evidence exposed differences of opinion over restrictions and the severity of the virus at the top of Government. In January 2020, Sir Patrick recorded that Mr Johnson had said his "gut" told him that Covid would not be a big problem. He described the then Prime Minister's view as "PM - 'My gut tells me this will be fine'".
Referring to ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock, it says: "MH - desperate to own and lead." It also shows Sir Patrick thought Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty was "more cautious" over restrictions.
Sir Patrick's notes referred to Prof Whitty as a "delayer" in the run up to the first lockdown. Asked whether there was tension between the pair, he said the Chief Medical Officer was worried about the impacts of lockdown on public health, such mental health, loneliness and delays to NHS treatment.
The ex-science chief said he was reprimanded for pushing for people to reduce contacts by 75% to stop the spread of the virus on March 16 2020. Sir Chris Wormald, the permanent secretary to the Department for Health, was “incandescent with rage” at him for making the suggestion in a ministerial meeting, he said.
Sir Patrick said he pushed for imposing lockdown in London earlier as Covid was spreading rapidly - something that annoyed Rishi Sunak, who was Chancellor at the time. He said: "I made that point at the meeting. It was discussed, there was a very clear rejection of that proposal. And certainly, I don't think the Chancellor looked terribly pleased at that moment."
When asked why Mr Sunak was not pleased, Sir Patrick said: "Well, quite rightly, he's concerned about the economy and London is very much the engine of the economy."
Scientists were not told about Rishi Sunak's Eat Out to Help Out scheme until it was announced - and would have warned that it would drive up infection, he said. "It would have been very obvious to anyone that this would inevitably cause and increase in transmission risk, and I think that would have been obvious to ministers," he said in his witness statement.