Voices: Case closed: Was this the most excruciating day in the Covid Inquiry so far?

There’s perception about government – and there’s the reality they keep hidden away.

While Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer were out weaving sunny fairy tales to stage-managed crowds of worshippers, the ghastly truths about recent years at No 10 were being unpeeled in jaw-clenching, hideous detail in an austere room in Paddington.

Simon Case, the most reluctant whistleblower ever, was on the witness stand at the Covid 19 Inquiry. And he was hating it. Stress oozed from every limb. Eyes blinking, hands rubbing together, head lolling backwards when trying (and usually failing) to remember embarrassing details.

“A rat’s nest,” he had called the. “Crisis + pygmies = toxic behaviours,” he typed on WhatsApp another time. And another: “I’ve never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country.”