Not Answerable

While hard-working ministers of the Crown do their bit to drive off the virus by waving the Union Jack at it, a chorus of less patriotic voices is sounding a more treacherous note. Several public figures, as well as the families of Britain's world-beating collateral damage in the quest for herd immunity, are demanding an immediate public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic. Although the Cummings administration, the Stratton-Symonds administration and their middle-aged front-man in a hurry have displayed unseemly haste in various other aspects of what passes for national policy, on the matter of an independent inquiry they appear to have forgotten that those with chums with nothing to hide have nothing to fear from the will of the people. Of course Her Majesty's Government has almost every sympathy with the deserving bereaved, provided that such sympathy is consistent with the requirements of the more deserving factions of the Conservative Party; but the minister for homelessness and brown envelopes has received no prior consent from Richard Desmond, and one of the health secretary's stooges has suggested that an inquiry would constitute an unacceptable instance of cultural appropriation by distracting the rabble's one-track mind from the hope and glory of the Union Vaccine. Since no conceivable inquiry at present could possibly result in any improvements except in the financial prospects of the major culprits, it does seem a lot of unnecessary bother.