'Nuclear levels of overconfidence'

COVID INQUIRY: LIVES LOST DUE TO MACHO No.10

- JOHN STEVENS

• Johnson sure he'd sail through' crisis
• Restrictions were broken on daily basis

BORIS Johnson’s toxic, macho culture in No10 cost lives as he shut out women’s voices while his ministers showed “nuclear levels” of overconfidence, the Covid Inquiry heard yesterday.

Helen MacNamara, then our most senior female civil servant, told the inquiry failing to include women in the decision-making over lockdowns had been deadly.

She said that in talks about Covid restrictions, a "disproportionate" amount of attention had been given to rules around football, hunting, shooting and fishing, while provision for domestic abuse victims was neglected.

In an email to civil servant colleagues in April 2020, then-deputy cabinet secretary MacNamara wrote of her concerns and said: "It is difficult to draw any conclusion other than women have died as a result of this."

During her evidence, MacNamara was asked about the shocking WhatsApp messages from Dominic Cummings to Johnson in which the aide used violent, misogynistic language, calling her a "c***".