When the inevitable national inquiry reports into Britain’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the first item on the charge sheet will be a failure to act decisively at the outset to suppress the pandemic.Some Whitehall insiders call this a stumble, a passing hesitation. Some talk about reckless complacency. Others observe laconically that Prime Minister Boris Johnson does not react well to bad news.

Britain lagged behind most of Europe in the spread of the infection. Yet, in spite of the lessons to be drawn from Italy and elsewhere, it has one of the highest death rates outside of the US. Management failures in procurement and distribution compounded political mistakes in depriving it of critical resources such as ventilators, testing capacity and personal safety equipment.

The postmortem, one old Whitehall hand says, will be “bloody”. Ministers and political aides are already privately shuffling off responsibility to institutions such as Public Health England and the civil service, suggesting they have been slow to react to fast-moving events. Prudent officials say they are keeping detailed personal diaries to record the advice they offered to Mr Johnson and his ministers.