At long last, Simon Case has received his hearing date for the UK Covid Inquiry. The most senior civil servant in the country was initially excluded from the Inquiry for health reasons, but now that he’s back and fighting fit, the top mandarin has been told to appear in front of Baroness Hallett on 23 May 2024. Incidentally, it’s the same day that Paula Vennells is due to give evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. The phrase ‘dead cat’ comes to mind…

Case became the youngest ever Cabinet Secretary when he was appointed by Boris Johnson in 2020, but perhaps his relative youth made him a little too savvy at — and reliant on — advising by the new-fangled medium of WhatsApp. He’s certainly had his fair share of messaging disasters exposed by recent leaks. Let’s take a look at the top five.

Mocking quarantined travellers

As one of the people working with in the centre of government during the pandemic, Case might have been expected to exercise at least a little empathy with the population upon which he was helping force strict lockdown rules. This included isolating travellers entering the country in quarantine hotels for weeks at a time, something that Case didn’t appear to think was too distasteful to joke about. ‘Any idea how many people we locked up in hotels yesterday?’ Case texted former health secretary Matt Hancock, who responded: ‘None. But 149 chose to enter the country and are now in Quarantine Hotels due to their own free will!’ ‘Hilarious.’ Case wrote back. Mr S isn’t sure the terrified guests would have felt the same…

Mocking government ministers

Though chosen by Johnson for the top civil service job, Case certainly didn’t hold back from directing criticism at the Prime Minster of the day. In another revealing conversation between Hancock and Case on the government’s virus testing capacity, the Casanova of the Cabinet noted that the ‘PM is completely right on this. Delegate delegate delegate.’ Case responded:

We are losing this war because of behaviour — this is the thing we have to turn around (which probably also relies on people hearing about isolation from trusted local figures, not nationally distrusted figures like the PM, sadly).

In a separate conversation, Case reiterated his sentiment, telling Hancock that having Johnson ‘focused on those numbers…helps keep him honest’.

Rishi Sunak didn’t get off scot-free either. In fact, in a blow-up about contact tracing, Case described the current PM as ‘going bonkers’ and raged that Sir Alok Sharma would be ‘mad’ to oppose it. The Cabinet Secretary may have regretted his previous candour when Sunak then became his boss.

Triggering accusations of left-wing bias

And it wasn’t the only time Case and Sharma didn’t see eye to eye either. After Covid rules were formulated and test and trace mechanisms devised, the Cabinet Secretary didn’t appear to have much time for those ministers who dared to question restrictions. In more WhatsApp messages, Case described how Sharma was opposed to telling hospitality venues to keep hold of customer details because, he wrote, of ‘pure Conservative ideology’. So much for a non-partisan civil service…

Employing ‘fear tactics’

Hancock and Case’s conversations turned out to be a treasure trove of uncomfortable truths. WhatsApps show that the pair of plotters devised fear tactics to keep the public compliant with Covid restrictions as the pandemic dragged on. Hancock was keen to ‘deploy’ a new Covid strain to ‘frighten the pants off’ the public and prepare them for a further lockdown in January 2021. Case was rather accommodating, writing in another message to the former health secretary that ‘the fear/guilt factor’ was ‘vital’ in ‘ramping up the messaging’ during the third lockdown. In the aftermath of the pandemic, psychologists have blasted government scare tactics as ‘grossly unethical’. Prepare for Case to face a tough line of questioning on this at the inquiry…

Masks in schools

On the practical changes that were brought in during Covid, Case appears to have been pretty influential in the first few months of the pandemic. WhatsApps from the time suggested that Case, permanent secretary for Covid before he received his promotion, was one of the voices that led Johnson to u-turn on his stance on masks for schoolchildren. After Scotland’s Dear Leader Nicola Sturgeon introduced masks in schools in August 2020, Case joined Lee Cain, Johnson’s comms chief, in suggesting the PM to do similar. While Cain asked the Prime Minister why No. 10 would ‘want to have the fight on not having masks in certain school settings’, Case added that ‘nervous parents’ would freak out if children were wearing masks in Scotland’s schools but not in those south of border. In an about turn, Johnson made mask-wearing in school corridors compulsory in areas that had stricter Covid restrictions and left it up to the discretion of headteachers in other parts of the country — a move that to this day remains particularly controversial. Expect more questions on decision-making rationale when the Cabinet Secretary is in the hot seat…

Currently, Case remains in post. Despite having not yet given evidence to the UK Covid Inquiry, the contents of his leaked WhatsApps have resulted in calls for him to resign after insiders labelled the messaging ‘cringeworthy’ and ‘ridiculous’. Will the Cabinet Secretary be able to hold onto his job after a round of intense probing at the Inquiry? Stay tuned…