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Boris Johnson once suggested that Covid was “nature’s way of dealing with old people”, it emerged on Tuesday, UK time, at the Covid Inquiry.
In December 2020 the then UK prime minister said that members of the Conservative Party held that view, and that he did not disagree, according to an entry in a notebook kept by Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser.
Separately, it emerged that in October 2020 Johnson joked that people could “get Covid and live longer” after noting that on average, people died with the virus at a higher age than regular life expectancy.
Boris Johnson during a hospital visit in England last year to see how the centre's work is contributing to busting the Covid backlog. Photo / Getty Images
In a series of WhatsApp messages, Johnson said “I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff” as he resisted pressure for a second nationwide lockdown.
Johnson’s delay in doing so, and its impact on the number of people who lost their lives to the virus, is a key question which the Covid Inquiry is investigating.
A line from Vallance’s entry on December 14, 2020 reads of Johnson: “He says his party ‘thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just Nature’s way of dealing with old people - and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them’.”
The comments were much more candid about Johnson’s personal views on Covid policy than were made public at the time.
One thrust of questioning from the inquiry’s legal team, with written evidence linked, was about Johnson’s views on whether to lock down the UK for a second and third time in 2020.
The first nationwide lockdown was announced on March 23, 2020. A second lockdown was announced on October 31, 2020, then a third came into force on January 6, 2021.
Messages that Johnson sent to Lee Cain, his communications director, on October 15, 2020, two weeks before he ended up announcing the second lockdown, were shown at the inquiry.
One message from Johnson read: “I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on covid fatalities. The median age is 82 - 81 for men and 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get Covid and live longer.
“Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 per cent) and of those virtually all survive. And I no longer buy all this nhs overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to calibrate.”
Johnson added: “There are max 3 m in this country aged over 80.” He later wrote: “It shows we don’t go for nation wide lockdown.”
‘It was the wrong crisis for this prime minister’s skills’
Cain, who was Johnson’s most loyal aide through his time as foreign secretary and then in Downing Street, was asked in evidence whether he thought Johnson was not up to the job of being prime minister.
He replied: “It was the wrong crisis for this prime minister’s skills, which is different from not potentially being up to being prime minister.”
Asked by Baroness Hallett, the inquiry chair, what he meant by that, he said: “He would often delay making decisions, he would often seek counsel from multiple sources and change his mind on issues.
“Sometimes in politics that can be a great strength...I think if you look at something like Covid you need quickly that strength of mind to do that over a sustained period of time...I felt it was the wrong time for him.
Dominic Cummings, the former senior adviser to Boris Johnson, wrote in a WhatsApp message about Covid that Johnson 'doesn’t think it’s a big deal'. Photo / PA via AP
The inquiry also heard that Johnson became “increasingly concerned” about coverage of the impact of lockdown in the “Right-leaning media” as summer 2020 approached, in particular an interview with Keir Starmer that appeared on the front page of the Daily Telegraph in May 2020.
“On May 28 2020, the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper that has been robustly anti-lockdown, printed its front page on a favourable interview with the leader of the opposition,” Cain told the inquiry.
“The prime minister called me that evening and expressed significant concern, stating our policies were causing us to lose the backing of generally supportive elements of the media.”
Cummings wrote in a WhatsApp message of Covid that Johnson “doesn’t think it’s a big deal” and “thinks his main danger is talking economy into a slump”.
The former prime minister will give his own evidence to the inquiry later, with an appearance expected before the end of the year, when he can give his own responses to such messages.
