There was no real plan to tackle Covid crisis, admits No 10 spin chief

BORIS JOHNSON’S government “had no plan” to deal with the Covid pandemic just a few weeks before the first national lockdown was ordered, his former director of communications said today

- Tristan Kirk 

Lee Cain, a key aide to the prime minister during the first stage of the pandemic, said Mr Johnson was still likening Covid to swine flu in early March 2020.

Mr Cain was giving evidence at the Covid-19 Inquiry this morning before Dominic Cummings, the controversial former chief adviser to Mr Johnson who was accused of breaking lockdown rules, was set to take centre stage.

An “action plan” was published by the government for handling the pandemic but Mr Cain admitted he could see that it was little more than a PR exercise.

“There wasn’t a plan”, he said in his evidence to the inquiry. “The detail of how you were going to do these things was somewhat absent.”

Commenting on the document, he added that some within government were saying: “If that’s the plan then we don’t have a plan.”

He said the government was “complacent” about the looming pandemic in January 2020, when the focus within Downing Street was on Brexit, 5G phone networks, a Cabinet reshuffle, and HS2 rail. It was wrongly believed that Britain was well-prepared for a pandemic and it could be handled primarily by the Department of Health. Mr Cain told the inquiry: “Clearly we got the assessment wrong.”