WE can never really expect genuine scrutiny or accountability from government inquiries, staffed and organised as they are by the state and hangers-on for the ruling class — more of a performative box tick more than anything else.

We shouldn’t expect the much-awaited Covid inquiry to be any different.

The fact that both Sunak and Johnson have withheld and claim to have deleted undoubtedly grimly revealing WhatsApp messages will no doubt be glossed over and no action taken.

However, the testimony to date from the current and former Tory prime ministers is both damning and a timely reminder of what the ruling class — and their bought and paid-for politicians — subjected working people to during the pandemic.

Both were at pains to deny any responsibility for their criminal mismanagement of the Covid pandemic and the hundreds of thousands of deaths that resulted.

When asked about the timing of lockdowns and other mid-pandemic schemes, it was clear that for this government — and the ruling class they represent — the main concern was ensuring that profits continued to flow and that economic disruption was kept to an absolute minimum.

Both Johnson and Sunak rejected the ignominious attribution of infamous lines such as “let Covid rip” and “just let people die” and words to that effect. But their actions confirm this was indeed their perspective.

They lamented the exhausted and overwhelmed position the NHS found itself in from the beginning of the pandemic, but took no responsibility for chronically underfunding it for years with a view to softening it up for privatisation.

All their dewy-eyed apologies and warm words count for nothing.

For all the attempts to plead regret and lessons learned, the pandemic demonstrated in the starkest terms for working people that capitalism will always prioritise profit over human life, in all senses.

The pandemic also had other important lessons for working people.

In our time of neoliberal austerity, we are consistently told that there is simply “no money” for public service, for jobs — for anything that would guarantee a dignified life for working people.

Yet during the pandemic, we saw mountains moved and cash flow in an instant to guarantee continued economic functioning.

Although far from sufficient, a furlough scheme was put in place. Overnight, every homeless person in Britain was offered accommodation. Health and safety measures were implemented on a national basis. These are just a few examples.

We can see that it was never really a question of money but a matter of political will.

The other, more fundamental, lesson is that these concessions and these gains weren’t dished out on the basis of goodwill from the ruling class. They were only extracted under considerable pressure from the organised working class.  

During the pandemic, a moment of national crisis, the labour movement was able to seize the narrative and channel the demands of working people.

This lesson is of central importance at a time when a general election looms, with widespread political apathy and a deeply discredited political class with little to no ideological difference between the Tories and Starmer and the Labour front bench.

Capitalism and the ruling class political system in Britain are as unpopular as they have ever been. If we are to avoid further stagnation under a Starmer Labour government or a further lurch to the right, as we have seen across Europe, the left and labour movement must come forward as the positive alternative.

The Covid inquiry won’t see any justice for victims of the virus but it should remind us of our capacity to fight and win for working people — a power we haven’t even started to use to full effect.