Johnson says Covid inquiry that criticised chaos in his government ‘muddled’

The former prime minister said the Hallett report should be ‘filed vertically’.

Boris Johnson has dismissed the inquiry report that found chaos in his government, and that a failure to take Covid-19 seriously cost 23,000 lives in the pandemic’s first wave, as “muddled”.

The Covid inquiry found that Mr Johnson presided over a “toxic and chaotic” Downing Street culture that undermined efforts to deal with the pandemic.

Baroness Heather Hallett’s report on the government response to Covid accused Mr Johnson of being too “optimistic” in his outlook in the early months of 2020.

He called the inquiry “hopelessly incoherent” in a post on X and said it failed to answer what he called the “two big questions” on Covid – where the virus came from, and whether lockdowns were worthwhile.

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