The Guardian view on Downing Street briefings: time to change a broken system | Editorial

When they first started in March the No 10 daily briefings helped people understand the pandemic. Now they are being used to browbeat the public

Boris Johnson's government began daily Downing Street briefings about the Covid-19 pandemic in the second half of March. Back then, the briefings tried to do two things at once. They addressed an urgent public need for reliable information about the advance of the coronavirus. They also tried to shape the way the public should respond to the health, lifestyle and economic threats that it carried. The structure of the briefings evolved on the hoof. They were far from perfect in a number of ways. Nevertheless, in the absence of parliament, which went into recess until 21 April, the briefings performed a useful public information and advice function for an anxious nation in lockdown.

Ten weeks on, that is quite simply no longer true. The gap between the public's caution and the government's desire to lift lockdown restrictions is stark. Mr Johnson has also been badly damaged by the Cummings affair. The daily updates have become increasingly tendentious and uninformative. Objectivity has fought a losing battle against the government's increasingly beleaguered mishandling of the pandemic. It is therefore now time to end the briefings in their current form.