More from The Times about the government's massive U turn:
The meeting that will change British society for a generation took place on the evening of Thursday, March 12. That was when the strategic advisory group of experts (Sage in Whitehall parlance), the government’s committee of scientists and medics, gathered to examine modelling from experts at Imperial College London and other institutions.
The results were shattering. A week earlier, councils had been warned to expect about 100,000 deaths from Covid-19. Now Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, and Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, realised the estimates were wrong.
“Unmitigated, the death number was 510,000,” a senior figure said. “Mitigated we were told it was going to be 250,000. Once you see a figure of take no further action and a quarter of a million people die, the question you ask is, ‘What action?’” Another insider said: “There was a collision between the science and reality.”
For two months the government had time to prepare, but Johnson’s instincts were to resist a life-changing crackdown. “There was a lot of talk about how this was just a bit of flu,” one senior Tory recalled.
Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s senior aide, became convinced that Britain would be better able to resist a lethal second wave of the disease next winter if Whitty’s prediction that 60% to 80% of the population became infected was right and the UK developed “herd immunity”.
At a private engagement at the end of February, Cummings outlined the government’s strategy. Those present say it was “herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad”.
At the Sage meeting on March 12, a moment now dubbed the “Domoscene conversion”, Cummings changed his mind. In this “penny-drop moment”, he realised he had helped set a course for catastrophe. Until this point, the rise in British infections had been below the European average. Now they were above it and on course to emulate Italy, where the picture was bleak. A minister said: “Seeing what was happening in Italy was the galvanising force across government.”
By Friday, March 13, Cummings had become the most outspoken advocate of a tough crackdown. “Dominic himself had a conversion,” a senior Tory said. “He’s gone from ‘herd immunity and let the old people die’, to ‘let’s shut down the country and the economy.’”
Cummings had a “meeting of minds” with Matt Hancock, the health secretary, who wanted stronger action to prevent NHS hospitals being swamped. Department of Health officials had impressed on Hancock that the death rate in Wuhan province was 3.4% when the hospitals were overrun and 0.7% elsewhere in China.
Johnson had also been queasy about the previous original approach. “Boris hated the language of ‘herd immunity’ because it implied that it was OK for people to die,” a senior source said. “Matt hated the language because it implied we had given up. You’ve got to fight.”
The problem for the government was that at the moment herd immunity was being banished from policy, it had become the focus of publicity. That Wednesday, David Halpern of the Whitehall “nudge unit” put the phrase in the public domain. Two days later, Vallance repeated the idea on Radio 4. With Italy, France and Spain going into lockdown, the government’s critics accused Johnson of refusing to act because he wanted people to get ill.
Insiders say it was “very bumpy” that Friday. “The meetings were very messy,” said one source. But when Johnson gathered his key advisers in the cabinet room at 9.15am last Saturday there was unanimity. Whitty and Vallance explained that Britain had been four weeks behind Italy “and now we are closer”.
The two experts, together with Hancock and Cummings, all delivered to Johnson one message: “Now is the moment to act.” The prime minister agreed: “We must work around the clock and take all necessary measures.” One of those present said: “The mood in the room was astonishing. You could tell that something very significant had shifted.”
Whitty and Vallance began their own press conferences at the end of the week amid concern that some of Johnson’s pronouncements — including a claim that they could “turn the tide” within 12 weeks — were not grounded in evidence. “Some of the experts are appalled by some of his claims,” a Whitehall source said. A Tory aide said: “Boris looks haunted. It’s like when George W Bush came in thinking he was going to be the education-reforming president and had to deal with the war on terror.” Another senior Tory said: “Boris is shellshocked.”
Johnson, who is a civil libertarian at heart, spent the week resisting Cummings’s demands for a full-blown lockdown of London — banning inhabitants from travelling outside the city.
A senior Tory said: “Boris really doesn’t want to shut stuff down. He is more worried than most about the economic impact but also the social impact of locking people up in their homes for months. Fundamentally there is a Boris-Dom cleavage. First Boris bottled herd immunity. Now he’s bottling lockdown.”
However, many sources report that the Downing Street machine is fast running out of steam. “Everyone is working to capacity and is absolutely exhausted,” said one insider. “It’s utter chaos and there is no end in sight.”
Businesses phoning up to offer help say Downing Street seems “swamped”. One ventilator manufacturer claimed on Newsnight that the government had not put in any orders — though sources say 1,400 firms are offering to build them and by Friday morning eight companies who have never made a ventilator were turning them out.
Some in Downing Street are turning to drink. An aide joked on Thursday that they had run out of hand sanitiser and were “using the contents of a vodka miniature” instead. Others are recruiting old friends. Gabriel Milland, a former head of press to Michael Gove, was drafted into No 10 last week. Tom Shinner, the civil servant who did the most to prepare Britain for a no-deal Brexit, who left the government last year, has also been rehired.
Numerous sources say Gove has repeatedly sniped at Hancock. “There have been tensions over where responsibilities begin and end,” one observed. Some ministers are lobbying to see Gove take charge if Johnson is incapacitated with Covid-19 or if he takes paternity leave, though Sunak ranks higher in the cabinet rankings on the gov.uk website and the job is likely to be Raab’s, since he is officially “first secretary of state”.
But there are perils ahead. “Boris and his team are absolutely terrified because it will not be the NHS by end of this,” a Whitehall source said. “It will be the corona health service and will just be there to pump oxygen into patients.”
MPs speculate that there will be two big inquiries — an international one into the origins of the virus in China’s live animal “wet markets”; and a second into the government’s preparations and policy decisions. “If we end up like Italy in two weeks’ time and 30-year-old doctors are dropping dead, the government is going to be in big trouble,” a Labour MP said.