Covid Inquiry

Saturday

Lara Brown

LIVE: The Spectator’s Alternative Covid Inquiry

53 min listen

As the official Covid Inquiry comes to an end, the Spectator has convened a panel of our own experts to ask the questions that the Inquiry didn’t – or wouldn’t – answer. The Spectator’s commissioning editor Lara Brown is joined by science writer and Conservative peer Matt Ridley, Oxford professor of theoretical epidemiology Sunetra Gupta, former Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption, journalist Christopher Snowdon and science writer Tom Whipple. This is a condensed version of the event. Subscribers can access the full event via Spectator TV and you can find more events from the Spectator here.

LIVE: The Spectator’s Alternative Covid Inquiry

Saturday

Ross Clark

The Covid Inquiry has ducked the most important questions

The biggest lesson to come out of the first report of the official Covid Inquiry is what a mistake it was to hand to job to lawyers. They have interpreted their job as one of conducting a show trial of politicians, civil servants and advisers who were involved in handling the pandemic. The have obsessed with the processes of decision-making in Downing Street, and with the characters of the people involved. Baroness Hallett’s address to the nation from a large swivel chair was an extraordinary dystopian vision of a Britain in which democracy has been replaced by a kritarchy – rule by judges. The inquiry has made good theatre, but