Forget culture wars: the Covid inquiry is a stark reminder of what government is really about | Zoe Williams

Ministers may prefer cheap rhetoric to the reality of hard decisions - but these hearings show the cost of the choices they make

Was the Johnson government unprepared for Covid because it was distracted by Brexit? Was the virus itself caused by a lab leak? Did lockdowns do more harm than good? Are face masks a conspiracy? If the 2020s are indivisible from the pandemic, Covid offers endlessly fertile territory for the decade's culture wars. They look irrational written down - what does remoaning have to do with face masks? - yet somehow we understand the faultlines, and how they connect, at a gut level.

Yet the public inquiry into the government's handling of Covid, which opened on Tuesday in a neutral-looking building near Paddington, west London, with only the most sober-minded spectators still attending by Thursday - and without even a desultory anti-vax protest outside to liven anything up - kept insisting on one inconvenient, unarguable point. Governing isn't about binary arguments in primary colours. The discourse may drown out reality but it can't make it go away, and there bad decisions still cost lives and good ones still need homework.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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