The “toxic and chaotic” culture at the centre of the United Kingdom’s government led to a delayed response to the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in about 23,000 more deaths across the nation, a damning report from an inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic has found.The inquiry, which former Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered in May 2021, delivered a blistering assessment (PDF) on Thursday of his government’s response to COVID-19, criticising his indecisive leadership, lambasting his Downing Street office for breaking their own rules and castigating his top adviser Dominic Cummings. The inquiry was chaired by former judge Heather Hallett.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list“The failure to appreciate the scale of the threat, or the urgency of response it demanded, meant that by the time the possibility of a mandatory lockdown was first considered it was already too late and a lockdown had become unavoidable,” the inquiry found. “At the centre of the UK government there was a toxic and chaotic culture.”The global pandemic, which began in 2020, killed millions of people worldwide, with countries enforcing lockdowns in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus.The UK went into lockdown on March 23, 2020, at which time it was “too little, too late,” the inquiry found, revealing that if the nation had gone into lockdown just a week earlier, on …
