Those pensioners who have supported the Conservatives with their votes may be forced to think again after the Covid-19 inquiry heard that former Tory prime minister Boris Johnson not only thought the disease was “nature’s way of dealing with old people” – but was agreeing with other Tory MPs in doing so.

It’s a staggering act of contempt for a sector of society that has propped up one Conservative government after another – and that comprises the vast majority of the Tory Party’s membership.

The BBC tells us:

The allegation comes from diary entries from former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.

In August 2020, Sir Patrick wrote that Mr Johnson was “obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going”.

“Quite bonkers set of exchanges,” he said, referring to messages exchanged between Mr Johnson and others in a WhatsApp group.

In later notes from December 2020, Sir Patrick wrote that Mr Johnson said his party “thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them”.

Another note from December says Mr Johnson agreed with the Conservative Party’s chief whip when he said “we should let the old people get it and protect others”.

This message – that the government should leave senior citizens to die rather than try to protect the population as a whole – will come particularly hard to the families of the 30,000 people who died in care homes for the elderly after then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s “protective ring” around them turned out to be nonexistent.

The BBC quotes Brenda Doherty, spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, who said reading Mr Johnson’s messages felt like being “punched in the stomach”.

“During the first and second waves of the pandemic the UK had one of the highest death tolls per person in the world from Covid-19 and it’s clear just how personally responsible for that he was,” Ms Doherty said.

Also providing testimony was former Prime Ministerial advisor and Barnard Castle visitor Dominic Cummings, who said there was no plan to protect vulnerable people, such as the victims of domestic abuse, in a national lockdown.

“I would say that entire question was appallingly neglected,” Mr Cummings said.

Boris Johnson – and more importantly, now that he has replaced Johnson as prime minister, Rishi Sunak – will face the inquiry later in the year, which is more than can be said for some of the key figures in the handling of the pandemic.

Cabinet Office Secretary Simon Case decided he was “too poorly” to testify:

And Hancock refused to appear unless he had immunity from the law – implying that his actions during the pandemic may have criminal consequences:

One element that is no surprise is the behaviour of Boris Johnson. Former Downing Street Communications Director Lee Cain, giving his evidence today (October 31, 2023), said

the pandemic was the “wrong crisis” for Mr Johnson and he was a “challenging character to work with” because he kept changing his mind.

This should come as no surprise because we already have plenty of evidence that Johnson was completely incapable of leading during the crisis and needed to be led through every step of the way by aides who feared that he would depart from logic (and indeed sanity) at any moment:

This is a man who was presented to the nation as the best possible choice to lead the UK in the 2019 general election!

I wonder how many people, presented with the evidence to this inquiry, would prefer Jeremy Corbyn in hindsight.

In any case, the Covid Inquiry is heating up – but will any political heads roll as a result of the fatal errors that are being discovered on a daily basis?

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