Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus

by Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott

A HIGHLIGHT FOR 2021 IN THE GUARDIAN

‘A devastating piece of journalism’ Andrew Marr

‘One of the most important books of our time’ Owen Jones

‘Calvert and Arbuthnott’s reporting on Covid has been truly superb’ Rachel Clarke

The inside story of the UK’s response to the pandemic from the Insight investigations unit at The Sunday Times

Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus recounts the extraordinary political decisions taken at the heart of Boris Johnson’s government during the global pandemic.

Meticulously researched and corroborated by hundreds of inside sources, politicians, emergency planners, scientists, doctors, paramedics and bereaved families, along with leaked data and documents, this is the insider’s account of how the government sleepwalked into disaster and tried to cover up its role in the tragedy – and it exposes one of the most scandalous failures of political leadership in British history.

In the eye of the storm was Boris Johnson, a Prime Minister who idolised Winston Churchill and had the chance to become a hero of his own making as the crisis engulfed the nation. Instead he was fixated on Brexit, his own political destiny and a myriad of personal issues, all while presiding over the UK government’s botched response to the global coronavirus pandemic. After missing key Cobra meetings, embracing and abandoning herd immunity and dithering over lockdown, Johnson left the NHS facing an unmanageable deluge of patients. His inaction resulted in the deaths of many thousands of British people and his own hospitalisation at the hands of the pandemic, yet further reckless decisions allowed a deadly second wave to sweep across the country in the autumn months with the economy on the brink of collapse.

With access to key figures at the top of government during the most tumultuous year of modern British history, Failures of State is an exhaustive and thrillingly told story – and one of the most essential pieces of investigative reporting for a generation.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Society, Audiobook, Science, Health

496 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 18, 2021

Reviews

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want everyone to read this book.

My response to this book went from “that’s quite interesting” at the beginning with the discussion of the origins and pre-origins of the virus in bat caves. However, this escalated to fury at learning how the Johnson government’s incompetence, denial of evidence and failure to “follow the science” risked the lives of my NHS colleagues, my family, and my neighbours. How can such a buffoonish exterior hide such callous evil?

The underlying truth here was that in order to save the economy, we needed to protect our health. The the government wanted us to believe that it was a choice between our health and the economy - and the sacrifice of some of our more vulnerable community would ultimately be an investment. This was their inconceivable gamble based on no evidence and contrary to scientists and economists.

I couldn’t help but connect up points in this book to how this was experienced by me: Johnson’s non attendance at crucial Cobra meetings (linked with my reading in newspapers at the time that Europe was being hit hard already) the falsifying of the amount of PPE we had or how much was required (coinciding with my following instructions at work at the hospital that we should not wear masks because they make no difference and could give a false sense of security), the triage instructions for NHS colleagues developed which would prevent otherwise healthy seniors from ventilators (coinciding with the worry I carried constantly for my kids’ grandparents- and I wasn’t even aware that in all likelihood they would be denied life-saving treatment) Johnson’s confirmation that the NHS had everything under control (I walked past the mobile morgue in my work’s car park every day when I trudged into work). WTF with the eat out to help out scheme? Dominic Cummings and Barnard castle? Suggesting that we should visit relatives at Christmas? I relived this whole past year - which due to work, worry and possibly psyche-protection, I had previously viewed as disjointed.

This book has put the pieces together, and I’m so angry. I’m livid. I feel the wrathful whirlwind of righteous destruction in my soul.


Read this book. Do not forget.

[Mike Robbins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott write for the Sunday Times. Since the pandemic began in March 2020 they’ve been tracking the story, and at least once they’ve upset the Government badly. Now they’ve published a book that will upset it a whole lot more. If they’re to be believed, poor leadership by Prime Minister Boris Johnson cost Britain tens of thousands of lives. The authors paint a picture of a government that was utterly obsessed with Brexit and did not take the pandemic seriously until too late. They also point to the 2019 cull of senior Tories thought not to be sufficiently enthusiastic about Brexit; this, they argue, left a mediocre and inexperienced body of ministers in charge.

Decisions on lockdowns were taken far too late. Calvert and Arbuthnott recount how a March 3 meeting of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) was shown modelling from Prof John Edmunds at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Prof Neil Ferguson from Imperial, who said that if nothing were done there could be half a million deaths. According to the authors, Johnson accepted the need for a lockdown in principle but not until March 16, but then did not actually impose it until March 23. In June, Prof Ferguson was to tell a select committee that “The epidemic was doubling every three to four days before lockdown interventions were introduced. So had we introduced lockdown measures a week earlier, we would have reduced the final death toll by at least half.” Another late decision was that masks were not required on public transport until June, and in shops and supermarkets until July 14.

The chief villain of this book is Johnson himself. The authors zero in on his concentration on Brexit and his failure to attend the first five COBRA meetings on the pandemic. COBRA is the British government’s emergencies committee (the rather dramatic name is actually just an acronym for Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms, which is where it meets.) As an unidentified Downing Street advisor says, “he might look like he gave a shit. And he didn’t look like he did.”

You can argue that hindsight is a wonderful thing, and locking down a country is an enormous undertaking for which you need very good reasons. Both are true, and could be used to defend the government’s behaviour in March 2020. But Calvert and Arbuthnott make it clear that the government did not learn from this experience. The lifting of most lockdown restrictions in the summer of 2020 was accompanied by the “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme in August, under which Brits were given a voucher to redeem against a meal out. The idea came from Chancellor of the Exchequer – that is, Finance Minister – Rishi Sunak, and did have a rationale; the catering and licensed trades had been hammered by the lockdown, and may never recover properly. But a rise in case numbers led SAGE to advocate a further lockdown in September. Johnson’s decision not to follow this advice (or at least, not for some weeks) appears to have been part of the breach with his senior advisor, Dominic Cummings; yet he seems to have seen the need for action before Johnson did, and his role seems from this book to be less negative than many have believed. After his departure, Johnson would make the same mistake a third time, failing to react to a rising wave of COVID cases in the winter. In fact, by this point in the book, Johnson is looking very hard to defend.

Why did he behave as he did? Obsession with Brexit was a big part of it. But the impression one gets from the book is that he simply lacked the moral fibre to make hard decisions. However, as I write this there also is much debate as to whether the government went for a “herd immunity” approach in March; that is to say, letting the virus infect a growing number of people, who would then not contract or transmit it again, lowering the vulnerability of the population as a whole. Right now the government is insisting it did not follow this approach. Dominic Cummings, now a renegade, is now insisting it did. There are some grey areas here. The government’s behaviour in March 2020 has been seen as evidence that it just didn’t care about individual lives; it would go for herd immunity, and if lots of people died in the process, tough. But the truth may be more complex. The authors think the government and its advisors saw the pandemic as equivalent to ’flu, which can sometimes best (and only) be dealt with in this way. The trouble is that COVID was far more lethal. Italy should have given warning of this. “Herd immunity was a dangerous experiment with no proven upside,” say the authors. “But Johnson’s government was willing, nonetheless, to try it.” It has since become clear it was never going to work. Prof Edmunds and SAGE saw evidence in September that after seven months of the epidemic and (at that time) 57,000 deaths, only 6% of the population had antibodies; moreover there was research that suggested immunity could start to wane after 2-3 months. In short, only a vaccine would do.

One of the most upsetting bits of this book concerns the rationing of care. On March 24 2020 the government’s Moral and Ethical Advisory Group discussed a ‘COVID-19 triage score’ document produced a week earlier. According to this, people over 80 wouldn’t get intensive care treatment; in practice, most people over 75 would not qualify. People from 60 upwards might also be denied critical care if they were frail and had an underlying health condition. A modified set of guidelines based on this document was circulated to doctors in the NHS; this was done for consultative purposes, but it appears that some doctors did actually use it. They felt they had no alternative. An analysis in April showed that of the nearly 4,000 patients who had died so far, less than 10% had received intensive care. Yet there was evidence that, had it been available, many would have survived. When Boris Johnson was discharged from hospital on April 27 he would say that the UK had defied predictions by not running out of ventilators or ICU beds. This was not true. The authors say it is not clear whether Johnson was lying or whether he had simply not been well briefed. They also say that the misapprehension that the NHS had coped when it hadn’t would make some Tory MPs sceptical about the present and future lockdowns – something that would have disastrous consequences.

The worst of all this is that an early lockdown would actually have limited, not inflicted, damage to the economy. The UK’s late lockdown meant it not only had Europe’s worst death toll during the outbreak, but also suffered the continent’s deepest recession. “Between April and June, the UK’s GDP dropped by 19.8 per cent compared with the previous quarter – a slump deeper than any other European or North American country and twice as bad as the United States and Germany,” say the authors.Some caution is needed here; the authors don’t discuss the possible link between the recession and Brexit, and neither do they acknowledge that the UK is dependent on services, which means it would be affected more by a lockdown than other countries. It does indicate that not locking down fast enough did not protect the economy. But it’s going to take future historians to untangle this properly.

It’s an example of one weakness with this book – that it has been pushed out very soon after the events it describes, and much of the ground will need to be re-covered later. In particular, Calvert and Arbuthnott attribute quite a lot to anonymous Whitehall sources. This is perfectly legit for now. But as Washington Post publisher Phillip Graham said in 1963, journalism is “the first rough draft of history”, and some of these statements will appear in future books and articles attributed to “Calvert and Arbuthnott (2001)” and will be taken as gospel without checking in the original book, in which they are unattributed sources. (And as journalists, the authors will rightly not reveal these sources without permission.)

This is not an academic question. The argument over herd immunity shows why. It was an experiment that would always kill thousands of people. If I wished to be uncharitable, I could say that a right-wing government like Johnson’s would do this simply because it values human life less than more moderate ideologies. That could also explain why the pandemic has ripped through other countries with populist, right-wing governments, such as the US under Trump, Bolsonaro’s Brazil and Modi’s India. Of course, they are not the only countries to have high death rates. Nonetheless, as of May 23 2021, the researchers at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore – the gold standard for COVID numbers – have the UK and US lying at no.17 and 18 respectively for deaths per 100,000 of population. Given their per capita wealth, and their supposed pandemic preparedness before the outbreak, they should be a lot farther down the list. For outright numbers dead, the US, Brazil, India and UK are lying first, second, third and fifth respectively. This is why this book is important, but also why it should be seen as very preliminary. If, as a future historian, I want to argue that right-wing populism drove high death rates, I am going to need to need evidence, and attribution to an unnamed Whitehall source is not going to cut it – especially as there are grey areas around the whole question of herd immunity, and why the UK government pursued it, or didn’t, or maybe thought it was not doing so. Some of this is going to have to wait for a proper public inquiry.

There are other holes one could pick in the book if one wished. For example, it starts with a long chapter that suggests the virus may have originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This has never been disproved, but is surely less likely than direct transmission from bats. The authors themselves quote a 2006 study that found that 6.5% of bats in 15 provinces of China harboured coronaviruses of one kind or another, so there must have been plenty of potential routes of transmission. The authors say that, of 41 patients in Wuhan who got the virus, “only” 27 had been exposed to the notorious wet market – but that is quite a large percentage. There is also the odd sloppy detail (one of the patients to die due to rationed care is described as robust, then a few pages later as frail).

Even so, this book is a fabulous bit of reporting. It does mostly have the ring of truth. It will be interesting to see what emerges when the public inquiry is finally held, perhaps in 2022; quite a lot may come out in the wash, and my guess is that most of what Arbuthnott and Calvert have written will turn out to be true, or at least not be refuted. If so, Johnson has an awful lot to answer for. He was not evil; he was just not up to the job. But there is also a broader question for the UK as a country. How did it manage this pandemic so badly simply because of one man’s failings, huge though they were?

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tired of waiting for an inquiry this most unaccountable of Prime Ministers is only going to call if he can avoid being implicated? Read this. A thoroughly devastating account of the UK government’s blasé, botched and utterly economically biased response to COVID. Sunak doesn’t come out of it well, either...

[Simon Pressinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant, important, but oh so depressing story of just how criminally neglectful our government’s been throughout the pandemic. For a bit of flavour, if you spot a copy of this edition, turn to page 218 and read the top paragraph, from ‘Cummings later disclosed…’ to ‘…agreed not to go.’ As sky-scraping idiots go in the privileged little one-percenter club of leaders today, Johnson’s hard to beat.

[John Buckland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important Record Of Avoidable Disaster

This is a very important document. It is not in the least political, indeed it acknowledges the difficult circumstance and pressures faced by the government.
For me it makes it Crystal clear that the government of the UK not only made mistakes at the beginning of the emergency but has subsequently been guilty of not just making mistakes but of ignoring their own previous experience but also ignoring the advice of those qualified to make scientific and medical decisions.
There is no doubt that thousands upon thousands of innocent people have lost their lives due to the incompetent leadership of the Prime Minister of the UK and this book will hopefully help in ensuring that this is recognised if only to help ensure that this can not be allowed to happen in the future.
Well done to the authors although I really do wish I was not writing this

[Ben Rowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

During the 2 years or so period of which covid ruled the lives Britons, one forgets the many, many errors made by Boris Johnson’s government. This book compiles all of them into a condensed, and shocking, timeline. We should all be embarrassed for our government, as they are, evidently, incapable of feeling it themselves.

[Jacob Stelling · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning and thorough exposé of the failures of the Johnson government in tackling Covid from two of The Times’ best investigative journalists. This book reads as a catalogue of mistakes and failures to ignore the science and ultimately make decisions which were often too little, too late.

An oft-used defence of the Government has been that all criticism of their response comes at the benefit of hindsight. The startling reality is laid clear in a well-evidenced and referenced manner in this book: the Government failed to ignore the warning signs as early as December 2019 and as late as September 2020, and at times sidelining their own scientific advisers when they didn’t like what they heard - all while claiming to be “following the science”.

This is a must-read for everyone in the UK, as public confidence in Johnson’s handling of Covid continues to decline. However, the most difficult parts of this book to come to terms with are the heartbreaking stories of individuals who suffered due to these mistakes - and the anger of their families is palpable. That so many people were let down is the true disgrace of this pandemic.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus provides a meticulously researched account of the UK government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book is corroborated by hundreds of inside sources, politicians, emergency planners, scientists, doctors, paramedics, and bereaved families. It exposes one of the most scandalous failures of political leadership in British history.

The book highlights the decision-making process at the heart of Boris Johnson's government during the pandemic. The authors reveal how the government sleepwalked into disaster and tried to cover up its role in the tragedy. It is an exhaustive and thrilling story of the most tumultuous year of modern British history and one of the essential pieces of investigative reporting for a generation.

However, the book is sometimes hard to read, with some chapters being longer than necessary, and the tangential information distracting from the main narrative. Additionally, the author's scepticism towards the government's figures may raise questions about the accuracy of their reporting.

That being said, the book highlights the commendable work done by the medics and other key workers during the pandemic. It also sheds light on the complexities and challenges decision-makers face in times of crisis.

In conclusion, Failures of State is a detailed account of the government's handling of the pandemic, and while it may not be an easy read, it is an important one.

[Gill T · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hard hitting , hard to read book which brings back memories of Covid lockdowns. I do believe however, that hindsight is a wonderful thing and we do need to take into consideration that the government was dealing with something which had never been dealt with before and, therefore, mistakes were going to be made.

[Maggie Rankin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly damning. If you can bear it, read it. Puts some context and detail on many of the issues that went under-reported at a time when we were all just struggling to adjust and looked upon our leaders to make the right decisions.
In actual fact, they dithered and delayed. Prioritised the economy over health, ignoring evidence elsewhere that the best way to limit damage to the economy was to control the spread of the virus. Their delays costs 10,000s deaths, perhaps more recent analysis would bring it in the 100,000s. Book onto goes up to January 2022.
Not an easy read, but anyone who has a vote should consider the analysis and findings in this book before the next election.
And Sunak is not the messiah he has been portrayed to be.

[Soo · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly well researched and written book of the utterly appalling failures of UK government in managing the pandemic. They are completely responsible for the many, many deaths and suffering that occurred - and continues. I was left feeling heartbroken for our nation and so very, very angry. There needs to be accountability.

[Gary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Written from the perspective of we didn't lockdown soon enough or hard enough and politicians are rubbish. Bearing in mind, these journalists from The Times, withheld information--pushing the government message, it's a bit rich.

Little data, and poor referencing make for a frustrating read. Someone else will need to write this book.

[Simon Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

As COVID-19 has consumed almost all of my working life for the past nineteen months, I've been somewhat loath to read even more about it in my spare time. Yet I found this recently published book by two investigative journalists from The Sunday Times extraordinary, gripping and devastating—and the experience of reading it, mildly reassuring.

The book starts with fifty pages on the history of coronavirus outbreaks around the world, and the likely sources of COVID-19, before launching into 350 pages covering the response of (mostly) the UK Government to the pandemic up until the end of 2020. People often characterise NewsUK journalists as being supportive of Conservative governments, yet this book, which sticks to a mostly straightforward timeline of events, could not be more damaging to the Government's claim to have handled the pandemic well.

Perhaps most damning of all is the section at the end where the authors explain that the Government's response to their criticisms was to deny any errors in their handling of the crisis. It was this book's elucidation of clear errors and lessons for the future that I found oddly reassuring: reflection, learning and continuous improvement is a cornerstone of any medical practice, and an explicitly routine part of health protection practice, and acknowledgement of errors felt like a bit of a return to normality—even where those errors have been on a unrecognisable scale.

Calvert and Arbuthnott include harrowing individual patient stories from the pandemic, which are tough to read. Its also hard—as they themselves acknowledge—to be certain of how representative of the wider response each of these stories can be. Yet their inclusion feels important to contextualise decisions and illustrate their human impact.

No work of journalism will ever be perfect, or fully reflect the truth of any situation: the blameless can be blamed, decisions made with the best available information at the time can look foolhardy in hindsight, and the real villains can go without mention. Perhaps Arbuthnott and Calvert are completely wrong on key facts, or on where decisions were made, or on where they place the blame. But, right or wrong, this book feels like the first draft of the history of the UK Government's response to the first part of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[D.K. Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

In general, in the news world at least, there is - at least in pretence - an abhorrence of bias. Reporters and journalists are supposed to be neutral, impartial observers. Of course, in reality, true objectivity is impossible; every writer has a direction from whence they came and another one on which they are traversing.

Nevertheless, a book such as Calvert and Arbuthnott's - which is unashamedly out to show how Boris Johnson and his government utterly failed during the Coronavirus outbreak in the UK - ought to be one which many of us would shy away from. Surely there's nothing these two newshounds from The Sunday Times can bring to the table without rejecting it on the grounds that 'they're out to get him/them'?

Were this book written by hacks from The Sun or its likes, I wouldn't even pick it up to toss it aside. But there are some writers who, if they are going to hold an opinion, do so either through solid research, or back it up to the hilt with absolute top-notch evidence. These two authors do both. 'Failures of State' is an horrific exposé of the combinations of incompetence and callous disregard for the British people; the evidence is compelling.

The book starts in China and gives detailed evidence of what is known of the origins of the pandemic. I have always been a firm advocate that the story given was true - it came from bat meat in a wild meat market in Wuhan. This is simply because, in my experience, all conspiracy stories are nonsense. There was no attempt to engineer a virus, no secret laboratory creating a bio-weapon. True enough, it turns out. But the authors have persuaded me that the virus did indeed escape from a laboratory.

They don't even press the point; they certainly don't present it as their main argument. Instead, they present substantial evidence which is out in the public domain and easily verifiable, stretching back years before the pandemic. Literally, the top experts in China working on coronavirus and studying the closest relative of Covid 19 were doing so in Wuhan - and had done so for years. This is a virus which escaped. It was, in short, a cock up. God only knows how much worse this would have been had the cock up occurred here in Britain because the Chinese - for all the arguable faults of their government - absolutely cracked down on this once they knew they could no longer keep it secret. This was key to their success at eradicating the virus.

From this cock up, the ground is laid for all the cock ups yet to come. We are given a day by day, month by month, chronological account of all that is known about the Johnson government's handling of the crisis. Using publicly published minutes of meetings, TV interviews and the plethora of official announcements, the authors condemn the likes of Johnson, Hancock et al by their own words and (in)actions. There is also some use of an anonymous insider of SAGE and another anonymous source in the civil service giving us further details which otherwise would not be known, but these sources are kept to a minimum.

What we see, from the failure of Johnson to attend the first COBRA meetings through to the beginning of the third lockdown where the book ends, is incompetence and an utter disregard for scientific advice or the welfare of citizens by the British government. Johnson, in desperately wanting to keep the country open for business in the wake of Brexit, managed to oversee thousands of needless deaths while also utterly failing to protect the economy he had so wanted to preserve. The expression 'shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted' couldn't be truer. Or perhaps, my preferred analogy, like a musician losing their place and playing exactly one note behind everyone else; the result is a hideous cacophony.

The convincer, for me, was that at least 70% of the evidence used by the authors I can remember occurring at the time. From interviews and announcements to tweets from the likes of Prof. Devi Sridhar and others, this is material that is all out there in the public domain that we all lived through. The difference is that where claims and predictions were hard to comment on at the time, after the event we can see just where the government got it wrong, lied or otherwise misled the public and media. Along with updated statistics by the best British experts on how many had the virus, how many were hospitalised and how many died on a month by month basis, the result is an overwhelming conclusion that the Johnson government is directly responsible for tens of thousands of excess deaths and untold suffering.

I do not know if if is slanderous to accuse Johnson of murder - or at least manslaughter - and the authors, perhaps wisely, avoid stating anything so blunt. But it is certain that it wasn't just 'a government' which got it so wrong; it was Johnson. At times, even Gove and Hancock come out smelling clean as the sense of everyone - even his own ministers - telling the man to take certain actions was ignored repeatedly. I lost track how many times it turned out that his announcements were news to the ears of SAGE advisors and government officials alike when something very different had been agreed in meetings.

Johnson has always been like this. This libertarian, fly-by-night nature of the man has endeared him to the nation making him one of the most popular politicians of our day. But his jocular and jingoistic personality has proven deadly in a pandemic. I'd like to say the nation will never forgive him, but I'd be wrong; I know I'd be wrong. We seem so used to lies, empty statements and bizarre antics now that Have I Got News For You joked just before the Hartlepool election "Tories extend lead in Hartlepool by-election after Boris Johnson eats a puppy". There's a deeper truth to this quip: we are absolutely sold on every horrid, immoral and lazy thing the man does. He can do no wrong, it seems. What an irony that this joke came from the very TV programme which catapulted Johnson to superlative fame in the first place. If only we knew then what we know now...

[Jason Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult subject to rate. We know this was unprecedented in our time.we know the wonders of hindsight.

But the book is more than cogent in its attacks on our early stages . Twice we locked too late. Out of date PPE was relabelled to hide the lack. The much vaunted eat out to help out caused a spike in cases. And that’s without mentioning Cummings. JRM insisting that Parliament meet in person when it was unsafe. The book is too soon to comment on the controversy over track and trace.

Giving balance where it’s due , we have done well with vaccination. The Balance of economic pressures is very real, but so is the cost in lives. The book a,so doesn’t mention the constant pressure from Tory back benchers. Difficult, but the book still carries much force. Johnson’s own bout of Covid highlighted the obesity issue but real as this is its not a universal scapegoat. Forgive me for also finding the hiding behind Nationalism a tad distasteful.

[Fergus · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly eye-opening account of everything we haven't been told about Covid-19 in the mainstream media.

Starting where the virus has originated to covering what information was shared with Boris and his team at certain points over the year and how they responded (or didn't).

Most of what we've been told through the year has been with the all too familiar pattern of saying something positive to make headlines, and then having nothing published when it's proven false. The UK Government have consciously avoided lockdown three times against advice, and later even evidence of how other strategies worked, the NHS was massively overwhelmed and thousands of people died due to lack of ICU beds after catching the virus when they were told it was safe to be doing things.

This book needs to be read by anyone with the slightest inclination that the UK has had a good response to the virus.

[Harry Steele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less an inside story and more a list of all the bad decisions, frequent u-turns and lies the government still refuses to admit to (despite evidence to the contrary), the most damning thing about this book is how it lays bare that the PM clearly wasn't bothered about the deaths his indecision would cause. A frequent occurrence of this book is Johnson choosing the path of least political resistance over expert advice, causing thousands more deaths, and then refusing to accept responsibility for his decisions.

He sarcastically quipped on the Andrew Marr show that 'the 'retrospective-scope is a magnificent instrument,' as if he hadn't been told by scientists (and seen from other country's responses to the virus) that early lockdowns saved lives.

This was a compelling read/listen (listened at x1.5 speed on audible, because the narrator does amazing impressions but speaks really slowly) as it reminded me of just how much as happened since COVID-19 came on the scene. This negligence should not be forgotten.

[Allan Heron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that needs to be read by as many people as possible so that they can grasp the magnitude of the government's incompetence in general and, specifically the exposure of the charlatan Boris Johnson, a man almost uniquely unfit to be let out of the house, never mind Prime Minister.

Decisions (or lack of same) has consequences. These ones cost lives. Tens of thousands of them.

All accompanied by a parade of lies dressed up as public information.

[Katy Larkman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Failures of State is an excellent overview of the failure of our government, & in particular, Johnson, to practise good political leadership during a national crisis. Much of the material was familiar to me as I had read the excellent Sunday Times Insight reports as the pandemic unfolded. But it was good to revisit the astonishing examples of dither & delay in taking appropriate action resulting in some cases from nothing more than apparent laziness, & to see again the repeated denials from the government of their having mishandled a deadly disease.

I recall being confused in late February & early March 2020 about why we weren't taking the virus more seriously, & why we were ignoring the very clear warnings that were coming from Italy (Sky News were very good in reporting this) telling us to be proactive. I recall our being told from the Downing St briefings to maintain a distance of 2m from non-household members while those instructing us were standing probably within a metre of non-household members themselves (& the media reps were seated elbow to elbow with each other), & the boasting of our perennially boastful PM when he described shaking hands with 'everybody' in a hospital with coronavirus patients. These mixed messages suggested that the virus wasn't really happening here at all. Then of course the horror unfolded & it was clear it was real & people were suffering terribly, many denied necessary treatment. And it was affecting already disadvantaged groups disproportionately. (It became even more real when I learned of people I had known who died from it; unforgivably in the second wave when the lessons of the first should have served as a warning to take prompt action.) Failures of State details some of the suffering without overwhelming the reader with it; it is respectful of the stories of those who died & their bereaved relatives & appropriately angry, but is clear-headed enough to maintain its focus on the political decisions made as the context within which these personal disasters happened.

I understand, therefore, why the authors didn't go into detail about the food stock situation, but as someone who intersected with the reality of the virus in the early stages most often in sourcing food, I would have been glad of a close analysis of food supply & consumer behaviour. Instead a reference was made to 'selfish' buyers stockpiling/panic buying, & to the crying, angry nurse who berated people shortly before lockdown for the empty shelves she was faced with. I would like to know to what extent people did stockpile, or panic buy. (I 'remember' at one of the briefings we were told to get in enough stock in case we were laid low by the virus for a couple of weeks, which, of course, if everyone had done as instructed, would have resulted in a spike in demand for supermarket goods. Two other people I know remember the same instruction, but, frustratingly I haven't been able to find it despite googling.) On 23rd March 2020 in the lockdown announcement, Johnson said people should shop as little as possible. Following that instruction would have led to people buying more in the few shopping trips they made, & thus seem to have been - or maybe actually have been - stockpiling. There were various posts on SM of people buying multiple items of basics, such as pasta, but while there was a great deal of anger at the apparent selfishness of people, it wasn't clear to me whether those people were buying for a typical household of say 3 or 4 people, or for, say, a care home whose suppliers had been unable to provide them with their usual groceries. Or a single person buying for several vulnerable relatives. We simply didn't know, but people were pitted against each other for behaviours that weren't explained, rather than against the policy makers who could have prevented a great deal of the problems in supply. Significantly, there was little mention at the time that many people, probably millions, who had bought their midday food - & often evening meals too - at or near their places of work from sandwich bars, cafes, pubs, from the Boots-type meal deal providers etc, suddenly started working from home & thus their food needs were almost all transferred to their local supermarkets. Thus supply chains needed time to adjust. I don't believe it was as simple as 'selfishness', & if anything I saw a great deal of community spirit & voluntary reaching out during that year, with people putting themselves at risk of the virus to help others without remuneration. An acknowledgement of those types of endeavours would have been appropriate, rather than a mention of 'selfish' behaviours as though it were established that that was the accepted interpretation.

I hope this book will be brought up to date - it ends at the beginning of 2021 & there is great deal more mishandling to document - but in the meantime that it will be widely read, & that those people who think Johnson is a top bloke because of his blond mop, dishevelled appearance & apparent bonhomie will take stock. It is clear from this sobering analysis that the experts advising the prime minister were not heeded in time, & that the consequence was the early deaths of tens of thousands of people during his premiership.

[Izzy E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Peston claims this book left him "literally gobsmacked". Literally.
Nonsense hyperbole aside, I learned little from this book that I didn't already know, so all I really got out of it was a renewed sense of bone-crushing despair.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite an indictment. The authors show that, whatever else the Government may have been doing, it has not “followed the science”.

[Owain Lloyd-williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

And yet, large swathes of the British public continue to allow themselves to be gaslit into voting for these clowns time and time again.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times, I couldn’t put this book down it was so interesting. It was, however, a long read and also quite a sad one too. I would very much recommend to people who have an interest in this area.

[Zoe Cheah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great insight into the Tory government’s gross mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. Living through it + having the privilege to study and conduct research surrounding this topic at Imperial already gave me an interesting perspective on this issue but seeing it all laid bare in this book was absolutely horrifying.

From reading this book- a huge shoutout, and thank you, to all health workers, civil servants, and scientists who tried to push for the right calls to be made and lobbied for interventions that would save human lives.

[Susan Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brace yourself for the truth around how the government acted so poorly during the pandemic

[Affan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The chronological structure of the book made reading it a bit of a surreal experience. There’s a chapter on the duration between the virus being identified in China. Another chapter focusses on the early days of March 2020, and another which talks about the days when the 2nd lockdown was about to be announced, and so on. It was a bit like reliving the experience all over again, and on that point specifically the book does a really good job of capturing the feeling and vibe of those moments. What was known at the time, what the press briefings were saying, and how the Tories were behaving.

The most unexpected bit was a chapter which focusses on the virology institute in Wuhan. Until reading this book I’d never given serious thought to the lab leak hypothesis but I gotta say, the stuff they say in this chapter makes you think twice. They doesn’t actually say that a lab lab leak happened, they just explain the context and history of the institute where coronaviruses were studied and how leaks can, and do happen. How for many years teams from the institute went to caves 1000 miles away in south east China. We now know that covid is >98% similar to the viruses from the bats that were being studied. It makes you think twice and consider the probabilities of the virus travelling from the cave to the Wuhan market versus the likelihood of it travelling from the lab to the market. A statistic that drives this point home: over 500 lab leaks were recorded in the US over a recent 7 year period.

One criticism that I have is that I think the authors don’t give enough credit to the sheer amount of uncertainty those in government had to work under. In hindsight, it’s obviously clear what the best course of action was but I think it’s important to remember that nothing that was guaranteed. Vaccines for example were not a given. Especially because the timeline for vaccines until covid has been close to 10 years. I think it’s easy to say that there should have been stricter and longer lockdowns but we know now from looking at China, how problematic that is from an economic point of view, and when the vaccines were not a given, saying that the uk got it wrong on lockdowns is not really reasonable. The other criticisms however of the Tory party however, such as awarding contracts to friends, bad planning of hospital resources and lack of pandemic preparedness however are totally correct. Overall good job but maybe a bit unfair on the balance between public health and economics and a bit harsh on those making decision. Easy to criticise, hard to hear responsibility of decisions.

[Peter Kilburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an appalling book!! Not the way it is written but the story it has to tell of government incompetence, a part time Prime Minister and indecisiveness that led to the deaths of 150,000 people from Covid. Unfortunately by the time we have a general election is is quite likely that the voting public will ignore the disastrous failures and, if the economy has recovered, return the same people to power. This should be compulsory reading for every elector

[Nigel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book contains a very detailed review of how the UK handled (or didn’t handle) the Covid pandemic. It is scathing in its assessment of Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock. Johnson was clearly not suited to handling this sort of emergency and Hancock repeatedly at best stretched the truth and at worst told outright lies about some of the things that were happening. The authors clearly had no respect for these two but at times this affected their objectivity in describing the events that occurred.
However, of more concern, is that the authors were part of a mainstream media that completely failed to provide proper scrutiny of some of the major policy decisions that the government made and this is strongly reflected in this book.
First of all with respect to lockdowns, they repeatedly criticise the government for not locking down soon enough or hard enough. There is, and was at the time, no curiosity as to how lockdowns became the go-to approach to suppress the virus. Lockdowns were not part of the government’s pandemic plan. Similarly the WHO said that lockdowns should not be used as they are not effective. But once it was tried in Wuhan (a totalitarian government can do this with impunity), Italy decided to follow suit and then it just became the default tool to manage the pandemic because as one senior UK official reportedly said “we suddenly realised we could get away with it”. There have never been any questions asked about what evidence emerged to justify this about turn in policy. Governments across the world just said they were needed and the media meekly accepted this. Where was the scrutiny? Where was the analysis about the economic harms lockdowns would cause, the psychological effect on people of all ages, the effects on children’s education, the effects on the healthcare systems? There was none and this is reflected in the way the authors have written this book. Whenever a contrary voice managed to get air time to question whether lockdowns were the right approach, the reputations of the people raising this are undermined eg Professor Sunetra Gupta (Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University): her reputation is rubbished because a couple of predictions that she made were inaccurate. However, time after time after time the figures produced by Neil Ferguson’s models are used to justify lockdowns and criticise government decisions as though they were gospel, but no mention of the fact that his models have for more than 20 years repeatedly got things very wrong. Similarly many quotes from David King, who was Chief Scientific Advisor to Tony Blair’s government, to criticise the Johnson government’s delays to locking down. This is the same David King who tried to persuade us to switch from petrol cars to diesel as it was “greener”, only for the government having to reverse ferret a few years later when politicians realised it wasn’t such a good idea to allow all the particulates that diesel pumps into the atmosphere. It appears that if you are on message with the authors’ viewpoint your reputation is intact, if not your reputation is rubbished. Hardly objective journalism.
The authors repeatedly compare the UK’s performance with the rest of the world and repeatedly cite us as being just about the worst (“Plague Island” is the title of one chapter). The metric they used was “Covid deaths” but what constituted a Covid death was not clear. Different countries defined it in different ways and in the UK, for some bizarre reason, many people who died were classed as Covid deaths when clearly Covid was not the underlying cause. However, now that the pandemic has passed, comparison of our performance relative to other countries is nowhere near as bad. Using a more consistent approach of comparing excess deaths over the period, the UK, which is one of the more densely populated countries in the world, appears just about in the middle of the tables for both the OECD and the EU. We fared better than Germany, Italy and Spain although throughout the book the authors repeatedly tell us we were faring much worse because they locked down sooner. The authors praise St Jacinda for her zero Covid approach in New Zealand and denigrate the approach taken in Sweden where they implemented only minor restrictions and kept the schools open. Yet according to the WHO, Sweden has suffered fewer excess deaths than New Zealand.
The same happened with how mask wearing is covered. At the start of the pandemic, scientific (and Government and WHO) advice was that mask wearing was not effective. Then suddenly in spring 2020 mask wearing became mandatory. Why? What evidence prompted this change of policy. Again no curiosity or scrutiny from the authors as to why this happened. The well respected Cochrane Review following a meta-analysis of random controlled trials carried out before and during the pandemic published earlier this year “did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks”.
In my view, worst of all is the lack of scrutiny the authors provide on the immorality of persuading young children to have a vaccine which has not been fully tested to protect them against a disease which will not be dangerous for the vast majority of them in order to protect their granny.
So whilst this book provides a detailed account of what happened in the first year of the pandemic, it is written with an agenda and to reflect a viewpoint that dominated our media and chattering classes. It is far from objective. I say all of this as someone who thinks the UK government got quite a few things massively wrong so in writing this review I am not trying to defend the government. Sadly the Covid Review taking place in the UK at the moment is taking the same narrow viewpoint as the authors and so I think the only lessons we will learn are that the people in charge of the government’s response were not up to it. That offers no comfort that next time could be handled any better.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I forgot to leave a review for this!! This book is such an important read for all of us. The journalists that wrote this book have done a thorough, easy to read exposé of how the UK government repeatedly mishandled the coronavirus pandemic. From prioritising holidays over COBRA meetings to failing to listen to expert advice regarding commencing a lockdown, the clear message is that Boris Johnson and his government repeatedly made the wrong decisions and failed to respond to scientific evidence. The latter third of the book is not quite as interesting but the first parts of the book are full of fairy shocking revelations.

[JAMES SMITHER · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike other investigative newspaper articles turned into books I've read recently ("Billion Dollar Whale" anyone?), this reads properly like a book – a well- and diligently written one – rather than something cobbled together in a hurry from pre-existing copy. As such, it should become the definitive account of how the UK "sleepwalked" into one of the world's worst COVID-19 outcomes, measured from the twin perspectives of both mortality and economic damage suffered.
This account is needed: it was a dizzying time, with more jaw-dropping "news" emerging every day from around the world than I can ever remember – and many of us deliberately chose to switch some or all of that off to avoid excessive anxiety. As a result, it's easy to forget – or have missed – some aspects of the chain of catastrophic missteps and misguided decision-making that compromised this disaster. At a time when a surprising majority of people responding to opinion polls who either lack or don't want this perspective are seemingly giving the same Government that is the principal subject of this book top marks for its overall pandemic response thanks to the more recent vaccine roll-out, this book ensures we don't forget all that came before this, as well as lessons for the dangerous months ahead that have still possibly not been properly learned as the country "reopens" once again. It is rage-inducing, stressful and genuinely upsetting to read on this basis: this isn't fiction. It's not even history. It's current affairs, and it happened to tens of thousands of our fellow citizens - including many of society's most vulnerable.
The book has the right mix of science and origin story (starting in China as it must); it has an appropriate balance of context-setting by employing (often damning) comparisons with global trends and direct international comparisons. It tells the story holistically, reminding of us important plot-lines that contributed and added complexity to the crisis - like Brexit, and divisions on the Conservative Party backbenches - as well as chronicling spin-off scandals like the summer 2020 exam results and school meals fiascos. It makes judicious but compelling use of social media - through which frenetic lens many of us observed and interacted with this slow motion car-crash - as well as drawing, as it must, on firmer academic and press sources, and whistle-blowers from within the political and medical establishments, all the while also providing succinct but enlightening background on key protagonists like Ferguson, Whitty, Vallance, Sunak, Hancock et al.
Lastly, I think it's important to say that while the Prime Minister is inevitably and rightly the main protagonist (and ultimately villain) of this sorrowful story, the analysis of him is not intrinsically hostile, and this is far, far from just an anti-Tory screed; it also reserves fair and important criticism for other elements in the response equation, including the scientists around the SAGE table on whose advice the government sometimes acted, and for NHS administrators whose triage and patient reassignment decisions during peaks of the crisis may have unnecessarily deprived many COVID patients of care that could've saved them and led to multiple more deaths.
Overall: depressing, enraging, enlightening, indispensable reading - highly, highly recommended.