UK failed ‘disastrously’ in Covid-19 crisis, PM Johnson’s ex-chief adviser says

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's former chief adviser said the government failed in the Covid-19 crisis and fell "disastrously short" of the standards the public had a right to expect during the most devastating global pandemic in decades.

With almost 128,000 deaths, the United Kingdom has the world's fifth-worst official Covid-19 toll, and Johnson was slow to appreciate the significance of the threat from the virus in early 2020 as it spread from China towards Britain's shores.

Dominic Cummings, the strategist behind the 2016 Brexit campaign and Johnson's landslide election win in 2019, told lawmakers that the British government and Johnson's Downing Street office was far to slow to spot the crisis.

The West, he said, failed to see the brewing crisis and that in February 2020 Johnson's office was still not on a war footing with many senior ministers including the prime minister on holiday, some skiing.

"The truth is that senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me, fell disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its government in a crisis like this," Cummings told lawmakers.

"When the public needed us most, the government failed," he said. "I'd like to say to all the families of those who died, unnecessarily, how sorry I am for the mistakes that were made, and for my own mistakes."

Cummings, played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the film "Brexit: The Uncivil War", casts the British state as an outdated system run by incompetent amateurs who are resistant to any innovation that would bring them closer to the modern world.

British officials, he said, failed to learn the early Covid lessons from Asia, were resistant to new ideas from young scientists, overly secretive, overly bureaucratic and lacked any real scrutiny from a compliant domestic media.

Ahead of Cummings' appearance, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said people would not be interested in the "tittle tattle" at the heart of British power in Westminster.

"I will leave others to judge how reliable a witness that former adviser happens to be," Shapps told BBC TV.

Asked about Cummings' criticism, Johnson's spokesman said on Tuesday: "At all times we have been guided by the data and the latest evidence we had."

In a series of investigations, Reuters has reported how the British government made several errors: it was slow to spot the infections arriving, it was late with a lockdown and it continued to discharge infected hospital patients into care homes.

The government's chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, said in March 2020 that 20,000 deaths would be a good outcome. Soon after, a worst-case scenario prepared by government scientific advisers put the possible death toll at 50,000. The toll is now close to 128,000.

Johnson has admitted that mistakes were made and that lessons need to be learned, but his ministers say they were working at pace in the biggest public health crisis in a century.

Johnson has pointed to Britain's vaccination programme as a success that will allow the economy to rebound before its peers.

Britain has the world's fifth fastest vaccination programme, based on shots per 100 people, behind the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Bahrain and Chile.