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forward slash voucher. Hello and welcome to coffee house shots

as spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by James

Heel and Isabelle Hardman. So this week, various key figures in the Covid

inquiry giving evidence, including senior members of the vote leave team.

Isabelle, it's begun today. What have we heard so far? And it comes to the new

state of evidence. So we've had evidence from Martin Reynolds, best known, I think, to all

of us as party Marty, who was Boris Johnson's principal private secretary. And I mean, look,

in lots of ways, and this is one of the problems with the Covid inquiry so far, I think, is

nothing that surprising has emerged. But I think it's still damning, if that makes sense.

So, you know, in sort of pure newsworthiness, oh, the government was in chaos.

Oh, Boris Johnson was quite casual about Covid to begin with. Oh, turns out Simon Case

likes mouthing off about pretty much everyone and everything on WhatsApp. And he's the only

person who hasn't turned his WhatsApp messages off. So, you know, none of that is a surprise,

but I think the critical mass of it all coming out in one session and the picture painted by

someone who, you know, what was at the heart of all of this is still very telling and will or

could be very useful if it's used in the right way by the public inquiry. So what we learned,

Boris Johnson wasn't briefed for 10 days in February 2020 on the emerging threat of Covid,

something that his private secretary for public services, who's been giving evidence this afternoon,

backed up, saying that Johnson didn't really think Covid was a big deal to begin with.

...