The Covid Inquiry grinds on. The process is ‘too focused on office tittle-tattle’ says one former minister in my newspaper this morning. Possibly – though it may also be that the warped focus consists in the media reports filtering out the worthier but more boring stuff. The inquiry (say others) is too focused on the speed or otherwise with which Britain locked down, rather than whether we should ever have locked down as we did in the first place. Others too complain that the inquisition is overly focused on ‘gotcha’ headlines when better results would flow from a sober review that accepted that everyone was doing their best.

There’s truth in each of these complaints but I don’t think they get to the heart of it. I have a different view.

However conducted, and with whatever focus, all inquiries like this will of necessity suffer from one crippling disadvantage. Whether in an aggressive or constructive manner, they invite people to try to justify what they did. Human beings, however, will almost always after the event try to justify what we do.

Most of us are never going to revisit past decisions in a reproachful spirit

It’s often firstly ourselves we mislead. We habitually put the best gloss we can on our past actions. It’s part of staying sane – we have to live with ourselves, after all: we have to be able to look ourselves in the eye. Besides, we know we meant well. What would be the point of crying over spilt milk? We are (quite healthily) not disposed to beat ourselves up, particularly when, as with lockdown, we’ve invested two years of serious personal inconvenience in a plan of action. We bridle at being asked to disavow such an investment.

Don’t, in short, ask a human being if he can justify what he did. His whole being will cry out to say he can. Don’t direct his attention to what’s past. Instead, change the subject. Direct his attention to the future, letting bygones be bygones. Ask him what he’d do next time. Would he do it all again?

What, you may ask, is the difference? In logic there is none. Asking a person whether they’d do the same thing next time is just another way of asking them if they regret what they did last time. But humanly speaking, there’s all the difference in the world between throwing the question forward and throwing it back. The second involves pride and shame. The first is just an inquiry. So we approach those two logically identical questions in different frames of mind.

Take Iraq, for instance. There’s no way Tony Blair is ever going to conclude he made a mistake, given the circumstances he faced at the time. He is not being dishonest about that. He has genuinely persuaded himself. The closest approach he will make to regret is to start a paragraph with ‘If I had known then what I know now’. But of course he didn’t. There is no point in pressing him on the subject.

Or take David Cameron’s decision to bomb Libya and destroy Gaddafi’s government. I have little doubt that Mr Cameron remains sure he did the right thing, though there may be a murmur of ‘If I’d known then what I know now’. But he didn’t.

Here’s a different question, though. Do we think Blair would take the same decision in identical circumstances on Iraq, if something like this were to happen all over again? Ditto Cameron with Libya? I very much doubt it. They have learnt their lessons, but probably only at an unconscious level. To reach this level, you must throw the question forward, rather than back.

And so to the Covid Inquiry. Imagine yourself a government scientist, a care-home manager, a health minister, a schools minister – or maybe just as yourself at the age you were four years ago. Be clear: we’re not talking about Covid-19, OK? Let’s put behind us a chapter in our history that’s now closed: we’re not talking about March 2020, we’re talking about (say) 2030, and this is completely fictional. In this imagined scenario an epidemic threatens to become a pandemic. It’s an illness that is relatively mild for most, and not generally life-threatening to anyone other than around an easily identified 8 per cent of the population, though even with this group most survive. How shall we respond?

Do we, for an indefinite period, (a) effectively confine the entire population to their homes, except for key workers? And (b) take a sledgehammer to our national economy by closing all non-essential businesses? And (c) close all schools, colleges and universities? And (d) pay previously employed people four-fifths of what they were earning, at a cost of (in the end) £70 billion?

Like heck we do. What a silly idea. Talk about overkill!

Or shall we, instead, devise the best way we can to shield the vulnerable 8 per cent, recommend sensible precautions to the 92 per cent whose lives are not in danger, in order to limit the transmission of the illness, but beyond that, keep the rest of the country, its businesses, schools and institutions, running – in other words, keep calm and carry on? Well, obviously we do. Wouldn’t you?

Well, actually, we didn’t. But most of us are never going to revisit those past decisions in a reproachful spirit. Next time a pandemic comes along we’ll find reasons to respond differently and (if we look back at all) to believe the circumstances are different. And of course they will be. Pride will not be involved.