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LONDON — Simon Case just got a lucky break.
Britain’s supremely powerful Cabinet secretary — that’s the country’s top civil servant — faced a grilling Thursday from the U.K.’s official inquiry into the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
But his interrogation came, helpfully, the day after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a snap election, diverting attention from what should have been a big moment.
POLITICO nevertheless did its patriotic duty — turning up in person for the grueling six-and-a-half-hour session to hear Case pressed on the role he played at the center of the U.K. government in Boris Johnson’s chaotic pandemic response.
Here’s what you missed.
1) Sorry about those awkward texts
The inquiry started — where else? — with an examination of Case’s very frank WhatsApp messages, which have stolen the headlines as the process unfolded, offering scathing takes on Johnson, his advisers and even the British public.
“They are very raw, in-the-moment, human expressions,” Case said — after inquisitor Hugo Keith deadpanned: “It is understood that you were a prolific user of WhatsApp.”
Case admitted he owed a few apologies for the way he had expressed himself — and said he “deeply regretted” the messages.
Some new text messages from Case in 2020 were also disclosed during Thursday’s grilling, showing that the top official once told Boris Johnson to get off WhatsApp.
2) Mistakes were made
Case got emotional as questions moved to the fall of 2020, when Covid-19 cases soared before the British government finally implemented a second national lockdown.
“We tried, at every stage, to act through the best of intentions to find the right balance to avoid these harms, but we didn’t come up with the right answer,” Case said of the day Britain entered lockdown again. “It was a very dark day.”
In Case’s written witness statement he described failings under Johnson’s government as the “worst governing ever seen.” He said he feels that responsibility for the many lives lost lies with all, including himself, who served in that period.
3) Toxic pygmies in Whitehall
Case — in newly-published WhatsApps and in his oral evidence — took aim at a toxic culture in Whitehall and its key departments.
In one freshly-revealed text to another senior official, Case summarized the situation in the critical Cabinet Office department as “Crisis + pygmies = toxic behaviors.” He said this was likely a comment on the ability of people in the Cabinet Office and in No. 10 Downing Street.
Case said he was deeply frustrated by the culture in government — in which “good people were just being smashed to pieces.”
“I felt that decision-taking was inefficient and sort of more difficult than it had to be,” Case said.
He agreed, too, with the inquiry’s line of questioning that there had been a “culture of fear” around Johnson’s then-top aide, Dominic Cummings, though he later added that Cummings’ “reputation was worse than the reality.”
4) BoJo reflections
Case — who described Boris Johnson in WhatsApps at the time as “Trump-Bolsonaro levels of mad and dangerous” and “basically feral” — had a go at smoothing over his criticism of his old boss.
In a lyrical interlude, Case said Johnson’s “style is very much wanting the debate to play out in front of him, competition for ideas and views I think is really how he made decisions.”
But Case added that he hadn’t understood at the time how the former PM was opposed to lockdown “at quite a deep ideological level,” which led to struggles as he considered whether to plunge a Britain once again ravaged by Covid-19 back into lockdown in the fall of 2020.
In far more diplomatic language than he used in his WhatsApps, Case said he found Johnson’s habit of making U-turns “incredibly frustrating.”
“That was really difficult [for me] as a sort of technocrat, as the gearbox trying to connect the prime minister’s system,” he added.
5) What about Sunak?
The inquiry also revealed that Case had privately told Johnson in summer 2020 to stop always agreeing with his chancellor, Rishi Sunak — now Britain’s prime minister.
As Britain’s top finance minister, Sunak tended to back quicker exits from lockdown than the medical experts who had the PM’s ear.
According to the inquiry’s lawyers, Case sent Johnson a message amid discussions of meetings between Sunak and Johnson that read: “It can’t always be you agreeing with Rishi.”
Inquiry lawyer Hugo Keith put it to Case that he was concerned Johnson kept being bounced into a change of policy by meetings with Sunak.
Case insisted he was simply telling the PM to do the balancing-act job of a prime minister, while Sunak carried out his role in promoting the economy.
