THE question by Rebecca Long-Bailey in today’s evidence session of the Health and Social Care Committee cut to the heart of the UK’s shambolic response to Coronavirus.
The Labour MP asked Dominic Cummings about his tweet last week that pointed to “destructive behaviour” in the political system. Cummings’ response was startling.
“There are brilliant people throughout the civil service but the system tends to weed them out of senior management jobs. The problem in this crisis was very much lions led by donkeys over and over again.” He added: “What is it about Whitehall that promotes so many senior people who are completely out of their depth?”
Cummings’ recollections about the Government’s response in the critical early days of the pandemic made you think of a chimpanzees’ tea-party – only with less mess.
The head of the UK Civil Service suggested we hold “chickenpox parties” as a means of achieving herd immunity. Yes, really.
To read the rest of this analysis, sign up to The Herald's new political newsletter, Unspun, and get unrivalled political analysis in your inbox every day at 7pm.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel