Simon Case felt “p—-d upset” when he was attacked over Partygate

Simon Case said it was “incredibly frustrating” having to act as a “gearbox” to connect Boris Johnson’s system while the Prime Minister kept changing his mind on decisions.

Hugo Keith KC asked Mr Case if he agreed that the “incredibly difficult decisions” Mr Johnson had to make personally “affected him so deeply and led to such agonizing internal debates that they had an impact on the proper administration of the system.” whose head he was.”

Mr Case replied: “I was the kind of technocrat who was tasked with linking political will to administrative action across the system, so you know, it was real frustration… I was the one who had to communicate the decisions that he and his ministerial team were making to the other members of the Covid taskforce, to the rest of Whitehall, to speak to Simon Stevens from the NHS and say this is our discretion and this is what we have to do.”

“So I found it incredibly frustrating that one day I thought, ‘Okay, we’ve done this. Now I can speak to my colleagues with confidence and say that this is the direction we are going and that we have made this decision.”

“And then… the next day it was ok, now we are somewhere else.

“As a sort of technocrat, as a gearbox trying to connect the prime minister’s system, that was really difficult.”