The appearance of dealing with things
Today is an auspicious day. Mark the date carefully on a calendar, especially if you are one of the hundreds of thousands of relatives of people who have died of Covid-19. For today, the prime minister announced that there would be an inquiry into the pandemic. That's it. No further detail. When will this inquiry take place? "In the future," said the PM. Extraordinarily farsighted that man. Why isn't the inquiry immediate? More than 150,000 people had signed an online petition, organised by Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, calling for an immediate inquiry into the government's handling of the pandemic. The prime minister said now was "not the right moment to devote huge amounts of official time to an inquiry," when the UK was in the middle of the pandemic. What will be the nature of the inquiry? We don't know Who will lead it, a top judge renowned for an independent stance, or will it be an academic or civil servant? We don...