Deeply dubious about that Reuters report being spun as 'the government completely followed the scientists, who were wrong'. Firstly, that's not what you get when you actually read it and secondly, there's a heap of things in the report which should be questioned but just pass by.

We're told that one of the main reasons for being slow to introduce stringent measures was it was deemed unacceptable politically. Well, how was that communicated? Did the scientists just decide that for themselves?

We're told of scientists deciding that it was serious and required action, but then that not being recorded in minutes with ministers. So was that not communicated *at all*? Were ministers not having discussions with these scientists outwith these specific meetings?

We get nothing on why UK scientific advice seemed to diverge so dramatically from most of the world, let alone the response. We're told that the country started to 'revolt' by being proactive in shutting things down - so clearly people were getting informed some *somewhere*.

And Boris Johnson is just a void in the entire piece. He was apparently getting daily briefings. Ok..what was in them? I do not believe or accept for a single moment that he was being told 'it's alright, no need to do much' until 2 weeks ago.

And in the highly improbable case that he was, why wasn't he saying 'err, so what's going on in the rest of the world?' The FT piece made clear that his personal aversion to government action played a big part - that's entirely missing here.

It's just a well-trod path that the 'advisers' get entirely made to carry the can and we should very aggressively push back on it.