So Boris did lie about saying ‘let the bodies pile high’ – are you surprised?

I’m not sure what to make of the revelation that Boris Johnson really did say, in the autumn of 2020, that he’d rather “let the bodies pile high” than impose another lockdown or “circuit breaker” to prevent another wave of Covid overwhelming the NHS.

It’s now been confirmed at the Covid-19 inquiry by his own chief of staff, Lord Udny-Lister that Johnson did say exactly that during or after a meeting in September 2020. Unlike others, Eddie Lister, as he then was, was one of Johnson’s closest and most-trusted allies, going back to their time together in City Hall when Johnson was mayor of London. So, he doesn’t have an axe to grind. He did, though, provide a sworn statement that reads, for the sake of accuracy:

“In September 2020, the R number was rising. A circuit breaker was proposed in response to this increase and the health secretary was pushing hard for this to take place. However, the opposition to any form of lockdown was intense. I recall the PM saying in September 2020 that he would rather ‘let the bodies pile high’ than impose another lockdown. Whilst this was an unfortunate turn of phrase, it should be borne in mind that by this point the government was trying to avoid a further lockdown given the already severe impact on the economy and education.”

A fair summary, by the looks of it. In fact, of course, the outburst has been reported before, by the Daily Mail and ITV in April 2021, corroborated via anonymous sources and with a more profane (if realistic) edge: “No more ****ing lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands.” A few weeks later, Dominic Cummings publicly confirmed the story in evidence to a Commons select committee, for what it’s worth.

The only figure who came close to denying it was Michael Gove, who offered this carefully worded, tongue-in-cheek answer in the Commons: “This is a prime minister who’s been in a hospital himself in intensive care. The idea that he would say any such thing I find incredible. I was in that room, I never heard language of that kind.” (Which doesn’t mean he never said it…)

Surprised? No. Shocked? Well, yes, just a bit.

I suppose it tells us three things about the man who ran Britain through some of its most traumatic times (and indeed contributed materially to the traumas). First, that he’s a callous man. There is a pattern here. Time and again he places an obscenely low value on the lives of those who happen to be older than himself, admittedly a moving cohort.

I doubt he’ll feel the same way about any disease being “nature’s way” of disposing of the old when he himself is in his dotage. He once quipped that the fact that the age of those who’d perished from the disease he was failing to deal with was a little over life expectancy showed you should “get Covid and live longer”.

Most politicians didn’t look at our senior citizens in the pandemic and think: “Oh well, they’ll be dead soon anyway.” And if they did, they were wise enough to keep such thoughts to themselves. It was Johnson’s arrogance that made him assume that saying such outrageous stuff in a room full of gossipy politicos couldn’t do him any damage, and it is that arrogance that has done his reputation such grievous harm. Or perhaps he just didn’t care about that either.

Cynicism aside, though, this week, as we honour the sacrifices of the greatest generation, it’s especially painful to be reminded of Johnson’s lack of compassion for their final sufferings. But that is the kind of man he is.

It’s necessary in a leader to be able to steel yourself when you need to take life-or-death decisions, but it’s usually done with some degree of seriousness. When Churchill, Thatcher and Blair deployed British forces in wars, they didn’t do so attaching zero worth to the lives that would be lost, on all sides and of all ages. It points to a moral flaw in Johnson’s character that is well known but no more pleasant to encounter just because of its familiarity. It gives the lie to the notion of the buffoonish genius he likes to give to the character of “Boris”. The mask slips, and he has a curious belief that he can get away with his inhumanity when it does, because he can always deny it – after all, it’s your word against his.

Which brings us to the second conclusion – that, if Eddie Lister, Dominic Cummings and the anonymous sources were truthful, Johnson was indeed a more habitual liar than we suspected. He was asked about it by reporters in May 2021 because it appalled people when it emerged, and he gave an unusually flat denial: “No, but I think the important thing I think people want us to get on and do as a government is to make sure that the lockdowns work.”

The thing about this now notorious remark is that it reminds us that it’s not necessarily a good idea to have someone running the country who’s better suited to writing columns than taking tough practical decisions and sticking to them. Johnson’s macabre cri de coeur was, after all, actually after he’d taken the advice of the Sage scientists and agreed another pre-Christmas lockdown (subsequently extended in another change of direction).

In other words, Johnson did take the decision, but found it so irksome to his libertarian instincts he immediately denounced it. Johnson would have been far, far happier dashing off a page for The Spectator decrying the new lockdown than being responsible for it.

It was indeed, to borrow the delicate phrasing of his former spin doctor Lee Cain, the wrong crisis and the wrong job for the skill set that Johnson possesses. A man with such little reverence for human life must never be let near power again.