Boris ‘unfit’ to be PM over Covid failures

The British government "disastrously" failed people by repeatedly mishandling its response to the coronavirus pandemic, ultimately showing Prime Minister Boris Johnson is "unfit for the job", his former top adviser Dominic Cummings told lawmakers on Wednesday.

In an excoriating account of the government’s response to the crisis, Cummings -- the arch strategist who masterminded Brexit -- said senior ministers and officials pursued the wrong policy at its outset. But instead of learning from mistakes, which he argued cost thousands of lives and worsened the economic toll, he said Johnson then ignored scientists’ advice to introduce a second lockdown and instead lived "in hope".

Covid-19 has claimed nearly 128,000 lives in Britain -- the fifth-highest official death toll in the world -- while the virus is noted on more than 152,000 UK death certificates, in a sign of its true impact.

"The truth is that senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me fell disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its government in a crisis," Cummings told a parliamentary committee.

He described political leadership during the crisis as "lions led by donkeys over and over again". "When the public needed us most the government failed," he said, apologising "to all the families of those who died unnecessarily". In response, Johnson told parliament he took "full responsibility" but insisted decision-making during the pandemic had been "appallingly difficult".