A fresh tranche of embarrassing WhatsApp messages have been revealed to the Covid inquiry, pouring further scorn on the government’s pandemic preparedness.
Earlier this week a text exchange between the former prime minister and his then chief of staff came to light, with Dominic Cummings seen to have described the Cabinet Office as “terrifyingly s***”.
The shocking messages also reveal Mr Johnson thought it was “wrong” for the prime minister to meet Scotland’s leader Nicola Sturgeon and Wales’s first minister Mark Drakeford regularly during the pandemic.
Mr Drakeford had been frustrated by what he saw as a lack of meetings with Mr Johnson’s government, but the PM believed working closely with the heads of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland would leave the UK looking like a “mini-EU of four nations”.
“That is not, in my view, how devolution is supposed to work,” he said.
Fresh messages unveiled today further underscore the turmoil that had engulfed Downing Street During the pandemic.
Posting on X, Open Democracy reporter Ruby Lott-Lavigna unveiled screenshots of text exchanges between cabinet secretary Simon Case and Downing Street’s head of communications Lee Cain.
One of them suggests that Carrie Johnson was the “real person in charge”, while others point to widespread dismay at the way the government was handling the situation.
Check out the exchanges below:
Related: QT audience member fumes over ‘bigoted’ tweet during heated debate