Downing Street pandemic infighting ‘far more difficult’ than Blair vs Brown

“Factional infighting” at the heart of Downing Street during the coronavirus pandemic was worse than the battles seen during the Blair vs Brown years, according to a former top civil servant.

According to evidence submitted by ex chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance to the UK’s Covid-19 inquiry, Number 10 was “at war with itself” less than a year into the virus outbreak.

And the situation was reportedly so bad, it prompted cabinet secretary Simon Case to contact his predecessors in the role for advice on managing the warring parties.

“During the time when I was there, there was healthy debate,” Gus O’Donnell, who held the role under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, told the inquiry.

“There’s a lot people have written about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown not always sharing the same views.

“That actually to my mind was a strength of government – a chancellor and a prime minister testing out ideas with each other.

“But I don’t think anyone has ever said that there were problems like those that Patrick Vallance is referring to and others have mentioned – so that, to my mind, means that Simon Case was dealing with a far, far more difficult situation than I ever had to face.”

According to an extract from Vallance’s diaries from November 2020, he claimed to have been told by Simon Case that “Number 10 [was] at war with itself”.

This included factions made up of “Carrie” (Johnson, wife of the former PM), “Gove” (Michael Gove, then minister for the Cabinet Office) and “SPADs”, or special advisers, with “the PM caught in the middle”.

O’Donnell had suggested “debate” within government should be considered healthy in the interests of avoiding “groupthink”. But Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, suggested the evidence showed that disagreements went “beyond debate or even ferocious debate”.

He said: “It indicated a level of dysfunctionality no one has ever seen.

“References to chaos, to internecine warfare going on within Number 10 – that's not the normal part of government, is it?

“That’s not debate. That’s a systemic failure.”

The inquiry is now six days into its second module, focusing on the government’s response in the early stages of the pandemic.

Last week, it heard further evidence of issues at the heart of Westminster, including details of WhatsApp messages reportedly portraying a “depressing picture of a toxic atmosphere, factional infighting and internecine attacks on colleagues”.

And yesterday it heard about conflict between Downing Street and the UK’s devolved nations, including Boris Johnson’s fears of the UK being seen as a “mini EU”.

The inquiry continues.