Boris looked broken and bamboozled by struggle to deal with the pandemic

BORIS Johnson was "bamboozled" by science, could not understand graphs and was "obsessed with older people accepting their fate", the Covid inquiry has heard.

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The Government's former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance was questioned for five hours about decisions taken during the pandemic - as extracts from his diary were read out.

They included the observation that the then Prime Minister believed coronavirus was "nature's way of dealing with old people".

At yesterday's London hearing, Sir Patrick said Mr Johnson had been "all over the place with his decisionmaking during the pandemic. At one stage he looked "broken" with his head in his hands and said "maybe we are licked as a species".

However, last night Sir Patrick's evidence was blasted as "arrogant" by one of the former PM's ex-aides.

Asked if his old boss had been out of his depth, former communications chief Guto Harri said: "I just don't recognise that at all... he (Boris Johnson) can get his head around just about everything."

But yesterday's hearing heard one of Sir Patrick's diary entries from May 2020, which read: "Late afternoon meeting with the PM on schools. My God, this is complicated...PM is clearly bamboozled."

Another notebook entry from September that year read: "5hr of meetings with the PM. He came back from Battle of Britain memorial service and was distressed by seeing everyone separated and in masks - 'mad and spooky, we have got to end it'.

"Starts challenging numbers and questioning whether they really translate into deaths. Says it is not exponential etc etc.

"Looked broken head in hands a lot. '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.""