Covid Inquiry: £100m inquiry has taught us nothing we didn't know already

It takes more than one clown to make a circus.

Fortunately, with an assortment of tap dancing monkeys, donkeys jumping through hoops and blind jugglars, the UK government has revealed itself to be "The Greatest Show on Earth" - if you ordered it from AliExpress, that is.

The Covid Inquiry, which has already cost hundreds of millions of pounds, has exposed the government and those at the head of it for the spineless, self-serving Etonian circlejerk that the rest of us knew existed all along. We've watched politicians rush to save their own skin, throw each other under the bus and generally highlight the mess going on at the top, while the rest of us did our bit to save lives and the NHS.

As of July this year, more than £100m had been spent on the Covid Inquiry. What has it actually taught us so far?

We have "learned" that the government was totally unprepared for the arrival of a global pandemic (we knew this already). We also knew already that there was bickering among the top politicians, the NHS was understaffed and under-resourced and that the organisation of lockdowns was sub-par at best. In this regard, no new ground has been covered.

The inquiry is important, of course, but only in as much as creating a rock-solid pandemic plan for a future generation. The rest is just guff and political posturing.

At the head of our Covid disasterclass was a consortium of Old Etonians; men born in a totally different world, who have never felt the struggle of having 75p to do a week's food shop, or £5 left but needing to top up both the electric meter and the car. Men who partied with their mates while the rest of us watched loved ones die over a Zoom call, or snogging their aides while the rest of us were isolated from our friends and families.

While they may have done their best, these politicians have no in-depth knowledge of these fields. Therefore, the best course of action would have been to rely on the expertise of the advisers - "follow the science" if you will. Instead, the inquiry has exposed how their egos got in the way, desperate to be on the right side of history. This was particularly evident around talks of a "circuit-breaker" lockdown mid-2020, which was dismissed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Meanwhile, the NHS found itself sacrificed at the political altar. While we were encouraged to stand out on our doorsteps and applaud our healthcare workers, the government under-supplied frontline staff with PPE (to the extent that volunteers were making their own) and allowing working conditions and mental health to fall by the wayside.

Now, it's continued on such a trajectory that NHS workers have spent solid portions of this year on strike. Well done, government...

The least we could see from this inquiry is a bit of humility - admission of the mistakes that were made, apologies for the deaths and so forth. We've had glimpses of this (Hancock admitting the UK should have locked down sooner, Johnson's brief apology on his first day of evidence) but aside from that we've watched witness after witness defend their actions, even when they were clearly in the wrong.

Apparently the Department of Health was the only department free from the "toxic culture" and the only one to respond early to the pandemic. Boris Johnson then defended his decision not to lock down sooner because he thought Brits would "get tired" of Covid restrictions. In reality, public faith instead waned when those who were meant to lead us went behind our backs (anyone fancy a drive to Durham?). Johnson also claimed to stand by Matt Hancock, but over WhatsApp described him as "f****** useless" and thought about sacking him.

We put a group of imbeciles in charge, and this was the result. Why is the general public even given a vote - we've got a shocking track record. John Sergeant on Strictly Come Dancing, Wagner on X-Factor... we even made a literal dog the winner of Britain's Got Talent once.

We vote for MPs because we think they will represent us, but backbenchers aside that is seldom the case. Dissolve the House of Commons and put the experts in charge instead - at least they would know what they're doing.