The Horseshit Whisperer

May 28, 2021, 6:38 am , by Newsroom

Richard Lutz reports on the Westminster political class fighting like rats in a cage

• 

I got to thinking, as I sat transfixed watching Dominic Cummings spew out his venom, whether or not this,little bunfight was important.

As many commentators pointed out, the sacked Downing Street advisor was part of the administration that had to contend with the Covid crisis as it erupted. So, did what he had to say really mean anything at the end of the day?

He was part of the diabolical lack of action as the disease roared through China, Italy and the States and headed towards Britain, a Britain that refused to launch an immediate test plan, stop ferries, shut airports and protect the old.

But here he was at a Parliamentary select committee, happily broadcast by everyone, selectively dishing the dirt on his former boss Boris Johnson, and an inept health secretary (‘he lied..’ said Cummings) and a host of civil servants with contrasting opinions. ‘Not me, mate,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘it was those bad boys over there that made all the mistakes’.

But, dripping with venom and telling tales out of school, Cummings was intrinsically part of the problem, part of the ineffectual planning as the virus hit. He was a cog in the inner circle, not an outsider. His evidence, his allegations are tainted.

‘People prefer to believe what they want to be true…’

If this was in a court of law, as opposed to the court of televised politics, his testimony would be either thrown out or heavily qualified as coming from someone with a personal grudge. A jury would be seriously advised to question the man’s credibility. Or maybe a judge would dismiss it as simply inadmissible. In this case, where a sacked employee simply spills the beans, you have to throw a nod to Francis Bacon, the 17thc writer who warned: ‘People prefer to believe what they want to be true…’

And on that note, I hand the podium to British columnist Ian Dunt who writes that the testimony ‘…was like watching a moral fable play out in real time. But beneath it, there was a gaping sense of horror.’

A horror show indeed as we watched a Downing Street Iago whispering venom into the ear of an incompetent clown (Johnson) and then betraying him and his po-faced health secretary Matt Hancock who, day after day, acted as a human punching bag in front of the nation’s cameras.

Should Hancock have been sacked ‘fifteen or twenty times’ for monumental errors and a series of lies,as Cummings told the committee in seven hours of chitchat?

Is Boris Johnson incompetent, prone to wilt under fire and as erratic as a shopping trolley with broken wheels, as the ex advisor claims?

And crucially is Cummings’ evidence important ? Relevant? Or trashtalk? Well, it depends how you view Bacon’s idea of truth. If his evidence fits your world view, it’s a vital insight into the running of government. If not, it’s useless garbage.

As many insiders point out, this is not about Westminster tittle tattle, not about who paid for the much-derided £38,000 decoration of the Prime Minister’s flat. Or the ups and downs of Johnson’s odd personal life.

It’s about a disease that took somewhere in the region of 130,000 lives and was improperly handled or not even handled at all. You just have to look at the empty government promise that any elderly person leaving an NHS hospital would be tested before being discharged to a nursing home- a guarantee that was broken and left one nursing home owner with a 60% fatality rate in his care centres as covid swept through his corridors.

But what role did Cummings play in this fatal empty promise? It’s unknown. Was he part of the decision to deceive the public over the elderly? It’s not known. Was he opposed? Or not around? Not known. But one thing is known. Hancock, sad faced, humbled, monumentally mediocre, rose and defended his role. Yes, the government promised to protect the old with testing before entering a care home. But unfortunately, there was no test service in place to carry out the life protecting process. It was as if he promised a trip to the moon. Except there was no rocket ship. No fuel. No lunar satnav. No map.

So, yes, he seemed to say, we guaranteed to protect the elderly but……we actually couldn’t do it. It wasn’t our fault. It was the fault of others. Unknown others. If you follow his tortured logic.

And so, thousands died.