Disgraceful proceedings

It is a play, in the worst taste, running at Dorland House, which should never have been held. The COVID inquiry as it is being carried out puts the whole mechanism of government decision-making at risk, while failing to address the point of the inquiry. This is the Establishment obsessing about itself, instead of about the nation.

We have much to learn from the epidemic and the response, but not in this forum, and not in this way.

The Greek for ‘playactor’ is ὑποκριτής, hypokrites; literally ‘one who speaks from behind a mask’. That has rarely seems so appropriate, watching the proceedings.

The Cabinet Room is barred to the outside world and sworn to secrecy for two reasons. One is that matters are discussed there which, were they revealed before action is taken, could assist an enemy or be a tip-off to frustrate the action proposed, or allow a criminal to flee, or distort the market. The other is that ministers and advisers must be free to speak their minds. There is much that, as Hobbes notes, in Deliberations that ought to be kept secret, (whereof there be many occasions in Publique Businesse,). That is the reason that Cabinet minutes are locked away from thirty years, and sometimes more: a minister must feel he or she can explore every angle in this teapotohedral business that is government, without looking over their shoulder.

The current proceedings drive a bulldozer through that understanding. Ministers and their advisers are now shown that every word spoken may be opened up and shaken before the world, shorn of tone and context, within the year.

Provocative questions are presented as sober proposals; a moment’s fly-by thought appears in cold text as an oration; the Devil’s advocate as an advocate. There is little truth in the search for truth that is contextless.

The conduct of inner government should be carried out calmly and in confidence. That was broken during the Covid time and the lockdown. Many unfamiliar advisers were brought into the counsels of state, unfamiliar, uncollegiate with the usual counsellors, and this seal of confidence was burst with leaks, smears of colleagues, allegations and ambition, played out in the press. It was a disgraceful sight. Now it is played out again with excuses and self-justification and revenge in a nominally respectable forum. Those revenges and foolishness on display makes it a low-grade gawping show.

The only one who has come out of this with dignity is Boris Johnson. He may not appear so on the news – he is damned by the pre-written narrative, but were he heard on his own, he would appear as a statesman, as no one else in the room can. He is an odd character, to be a comic, a jester, an uncontrolled loose wheel, and suddenly a sober elder. What is an act and what the reality is hard to say – I have never met the man. All politicians speak from behind a mask and act according to its character, so that the mask is the reality of action. Mr Johnson displays that he has more raw intelligence than anyone else in the room, but he has always hidden it behind his masks.

The performance will go on, and the sober dignity of government will continue to be shown up as nothing more than fantasy. (Few are worthy to be entrusted with the responsibilities that come with political power – those who seek that power least of all. Expert advisers have to be appointed from those not bright enough to have gone into creating value in commerce.)

When it all ends, and in spite of the generous hourly rates earned by those paid to keep it going, it will end, we are left with a ruin. The dignity of governing is exposed as a sham, the wisdom of the wise is shown as foolishness. Worst of all, no one in the hitherto confidential corridors of responsibility will now be able to speak frankly, for any word may be carried to the floor of an undignified public inquiry. Originality and imagination are banished. We will all be poorer for this.