DOMINIC CUMMINGS’s appearance before a parliamentary select committee was one of those rare occasions when the viewer is left speechless with shock and anger. 

And, even more unusually, this was not because there were any great revelations.  

Cummings simply confirmed all our worst suspicions about how the government handled and continues to handle the pandemic. 

The shambles in government is not accidental. It is a product of an entirely wrong business first/herd immunity policy. We should have had a zero-Covid policy, and still could.

It should be noted that the government’s response, duly retold by large sections of the press, was that the evidence was a “performance” and that the motive was revenge.  

Maybe so. But it is extremely noteworthy that the ministers concerned do not even attempt to rebut the claims he made. 

As my great colleague Bell Ribeiro-Addy told the politics programme, when a mafiosi turns penitenti, it is not standard practice to say: “You can’t trust this guy. He’s a gangster.” 

His evidence is tested and used to secure convictions. According to the logic of large parts of the British press, there never could be mafia trials, because they rely on mafia witnesses.

We do not need to concern ourselves with Cummings’s judgements on character, that, for example Boris Johnson is unfit for public office.  

Being responsible for a policy which led to 150,000 dead is the most damning verdict there could be. 

Instead, we should focus on Cummings’s evidence. This showed, among other things, that “herd immunity” without vaccination was the government’s policy, and that this would inevitably lead to very large numbers of deaths.  

There was further evidence that literally thousands of people were released from hospitals back into care homes without ever having been tested for the coronavirus. 

This led directly to tens of thousands of deaths in the care homes, of disabled people as well as the elderly.

At the hearing, Cummings offered charts, minutes and photographs to support his claims.  

Ministers have offered nothing in their defence. Literally, when questioned about this in the Commons both Matt Hancock and Johnson effectively refused to answer and provided completely meaningless and irrelevant responses. They did not refute the evidence or the claims.

The usual nonsense in this country of treating politics as soap opera should be set aside.  

There is nothing much more important than people’s lives. Government policy on the pandemic led to 150,000 deaths.  

Britain has one of the worst per capita death tolls in the world and one of the worst economic outcomes, measured by the decline in GDP.

The government’s claim was that it was protecting the NHS. With a record five million people awaiting treatment for serious conditions, this another patent falsehood.  

The government’s real position was that it was prioritising business interests.  

But it neglected the fact that people are the key ingredient for any successful enterprise, firstly as workers and then as customers.  

It is not possible to have a normally functioning economy during a pandemic.

The claim that nothing else could have been done is equally untrue.  

Many countries in the world have effectively suppressed the virus with a zero-Covid strategy.  

These countries include Australia, China, Vietnam and New Zealand. There is nothing uniform about their societies, languages, geography, systems of government or other factors which could have prevented this country from emulating their success. 

What was lacking was the correct political framework, that people’s lives were paramount and the necessary policies that flow from that.  

None of those countries achieved their effective suppression of the virus with “herd immunity” or even with vaccines, important as they are.  

These countries saved lives with strict lockdowns, supporting their populations, with a fully effective test and trace system.  

They also closed their borders (whether they were islands or not) and provided a system of fully supported isolation, including financial support.

This government has delivered none of this. It has clearly been motivated by other factors.  

The pandemic has been a bonanza for Tory donors and big business, and the policy of bypassing the NHS to benefit the private sector has been accelerated with catastrophic results.

The issue now is that, in the middle of this furore, we are under the threat of a new resurgence in cases.  

That is why even the government is jittery about the renewed rise in cases. 

The government’s claims that the easing of lockdown was “irreversible” is clearly untrue, as the residents Bolton, Leicester and elsewhere can testify. 

We can all hope that is not the case and that this resurgence can be brought under control.  

But hope should never be the basis for policy, and certainly not government policy during a pandemic. 

The reality is that the government is playing Russian roulette with the virus and with people’s lives. 

For as long as the virus is allowed to freely circulate, the risk of further mutations remains, and that these mutations might evolve in the direction of greater transmissibility, or greater virulence or even develop vaccine resistance.  

Vaccines are not a magic bullet for two reasons. Large parts of the population can never be vaccinated, such as the very young or the very vulnerable.  

They remain under threat and can continue to host and transmit mutating viruses.  

In addition, the vaccines themselves are not 100 per cent effective in preventing transmission among the vaccinated. 

Together this means that a large part of the population will always remain at risk and the mutation process is a threat to everyone.

It should be clear that a “maximum suppression” strategy should be adopted, a zero-Covid policy.  

We already have case numbers way below their peak, and hospitalisations and deaths too.  

But every time in the past we have been here, the government has simply reopened the economy and allowed another resurgence.  

It really doesn’t have to be this way. Low cases mean the additional effort required to achieve effective zero-Covid is now minimal, compared with all the sacrifices to date that have been repeatedly wasted.  

A proper lockdown with all non-essential workers at home, a NHS-led test and trace system and a fully supported system of isolation are what are proven to work, along with strict quarantine for only essential travellers.

The government could have ended this pandemic more than a year ago and saved tens of thousands of lives. 

But it chose not to, and it was a terrible mistake of the Labour leadership to offer unconditional support to such a policy. It is not too late to change course.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and was shadow home secretary from 2016 to 2020.