COVID: The Year of Indecision

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2021

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A year on from Lockdown One, what have we learned – if anything – from the response to the once-in-a-century crisis of COVID? A new IfG paper identifies ten urgent lessons that government needs to learn. And if there is to be a Public Inquiry, what should it seek to discover? Plus, as the post-EU Transition Period ends, does the real Brexit start here? And what problems has the Government’s approach stored up? The Guardian’s Rafael Behr is our special guest. “Boris Johnson wanted to play the role of the happy-go-lucky leader and it just did not equip him for delivering the bad news and hard decisions that the crisis demanded.” – Rafael Behr “There’s a clichéd Yes Minister view that the Civil Service elite know better than operational systems on the ground… But the pandemic turned that on its head.” – Alex Thomas “I fear that the current Prime Minister will quickly seal off the disaster site, bulldoze the black boxes and claim it’s time to move on.” – Rafael Behr Presented by Bronwen Maddox with Maddy Thimont-Jack, Rhys Clyne and Alex Thomas. Audio production by Alex Rees. Inside Briefing is a Podmasters Production for the IfG. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Inside Briefing, the podcast in the Institute for Government.
0:15.3	I'm Bronwyn Maddox.
0:16.6	In a year ago this week, the Prime Minister ordered us all to go home and stay there.
0:20.6	That was the start of the first national lockdown, the like of which none of us had ever experienced.
0:26.1	A year of working at home, keeping apart from friends and family, and shopping online began.
0:31.8	So how well did the government handle itself?
0:34.4	Boris Johnson, carefully ducking that question and answering a slightly different one,
0:37.8	acknowledged this week that there are many things we wish we'd known and many things we wish
0:42.2	we'd done differently at the time. The new IFG report sets out 10 lessons for government. We're
0:47.6	going to take a look at the score sheet. As the country got to grips with that crisis,
0:51.2	it was also adapting to life outside the EU. In the last few months,
0:55.2	there have been, in the government's words, some teething problems. Another new IFG report, we're really
1:00.0	spoiling you this week, says that that phrase is downplaying the problem. So we'll take a look at
1:05.4	whether the problems will persist and how this fits in with the current row with the EU over vaccines.
1:11.3	Joining me in the studio again is Alex Thomas,
1:13.1	who leads our work on the civil service and co-authored that report on 10 lessons from the crisis.
1:17.6	Great to have you with us, Alex.
1:19.0	Hi, Bronwyn. Good to be here.
1:20.9	Great, and I'm delighted as well to be joined today by Guardian columnist Raphael.
1:25.0	There. Hi, Raphael. How are you?
1:26.7	Hi there. I'm very well. Thanks for having
1:28.1	me on. Great. I love your recent columns on this. Oh, thank you. Let's start with the first anniversary
	...

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