Overblown Covid inquiry has turned into free-for-all for left to attack Tories

THE mammoth, overblown Covid inquiry is off to a dispiriting start.

Its sole focus should be on why public health bodies left us so unprepared, whether we are better placed now and whether lockdowns were too short, too long, or worthwhile at all — given the ­economic carnage caused, for reportedly few lives saved.

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Yet the signs are already there that it could turn into a free-for-all for cynical left-wing Remainers to attack Tories and their policies.

Even before a word of evidence yesterday the inquiry’s own lawyer claimed Brexit left us unprepared.

Why, we wonder, were other countries LESS prepared and their death tolls higher?

Brexit, again?

The TUC turned up to attack “corrosive” Government infighting.

The Tory-hating BMA doctors’ union piled in.

Even Cameron era “austerity” is in the dock.

“Independent Sage”, those self-important, Communist-led ­academics who wrongly demanded more lockdowns as well as social ­distancing

“forever”, are giving evidence. Why?

Meanwhile the inquiry has bizarrely little interest in how Covid began in China.

It just seems hell-bent on dishing out blame in Britain.

Without balance — and allowing for snap decisions taken under colossal pressure — this bloated bonanza for lawyers will not only last years, it won’t serve much useful purpose either.

The lockdown-avoiding Swedes finished their probe last year.

Ours is just starting.

It is not too late for its Chair Baroness Hallett to strip it back and refocus solely on rapidly learning lessons vital to protecting Britain.

Fat lot of good

A BAN on supermarket buy-one-get-one-frees will not help a single person lose weight.

The Government’s own figures confirm it.

The Health Department estimates that scrapping cut-price deals will save a man 3.7 calories a day, a woman 2.8 and a child 2.5.

At most that’s 1/19th of one digestive biscuit — 0.1 per cent of a man’s normal daily calorie intake.

If weight was that easy to lose or keep off, no one would be fat.

The Government cannot defend this absurdity.

And yet it is going ahead with it in October.

It has surrendered to the Westminster nanny-state lobby who sneer at other people’s diets.

The only result will be to hike shopping bills for the poorest.

A brave move a year from an election.

Climate reality

YOU’D think this warm, sunny ­weather would be perfect for solar power.

But the heat makes the panels less efficient.

And it’s not windy enough for ­turbines to generate much.

So, as millions switched on fans and aircon, a coal plant had to be fired up for the first time in weeks.

The reality which eco fanatics cannot grasp is that solar and wind alone will never reliably power a country this size and with such variable weather.

And Net Zero will never happen without planning and building several new nuclear plants.

Until then we need oil and gas.

The more we extract from the North Sea, the better off and the safer Britain will be.