A fight over Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps? The dither and delay of Britain’s Covid inquiry is a disgrace | Simon Jenkins

Sweden's pandemic postmortem is done and dusted, yet ours seems headed for the courts before it has even begun

British politics has become a medieval battlefield across which the victors wander, seeking the twitching remains of Boris Johnson to harass and hack. The latest spat is over how much to reveal of his Downing Street behaviour during Covid. Lady Hallett, chair of the Covid inquiry, wants the unredacted WhatsApp messages between Johnson and 40 senior colleagues, along with unredacted diaries and 24 notebooks.

Hallett thinks all material is potentially relevant for investigating, say, the degree of attention given to the emergence of Covid-19 in early 2020 by the then prime minister". The Cabinet Office strongly disagrees, citing privacy and disputing the relevance of much of the material. The eager Liberal Democrats claim that being kept in the dark is yet another insult to bereaved families waiting for justice".

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist