The Sunday Times dominated the weekend’s debate thanks to their article, “38 Days When Britain Sleepwalked into Disaster“. Aspects of the piece were subsequently torn apart, in particular the accusation that the PM “skipped” five COBRA meetings at the start of the crisis, with medical experts and the Department for Health putting out lengthy rebuttals of the article’s claim. Guido wasn’t surprised the article had holes in, not least because the Sunday Times’ Environment Editor, Jonathan Leake, was one of the authors. Leake’s stories are often full of holes…

One stark mistake in the article was claiming immunologist Peter Openshaw “would have recommended increasing the threat to high”, however Openshaw later tweeted “I wasn’t there so can’t say if I would have dissented if I’d been there to hear the arguments”.

Kind of you, but I wasn't there so can't say if I would have dissented if I'd been there to hear the arguments. I generally think that you accept collective responsibility even if you are absent because you've chosen to be somewhere else. https://t.co/9yPwZeExHw

— Peter Openshaw (@p_openshaw) April 19, 2020

Leake has a string of journalist faux pas to his name, and is fondly remembered by a source at DEFRA for the following:

• Accused Gove of ordering the “killing of sick squirrels and deer”, with DEFRA subsequently explaining it was completely untrue and he hadn’t approached them for comment
• Asserted based purely on anecdotal evidence that “Pets, zoo animals and even Prince Charles’s cattle have been felled by the rampant disease [TB]” – something, again, the department explicitly said was completely untrue only to not have their statement included in the piece
• Wrongly claimed “French warship chases fishermen from scallop bay”, once again without asking the department who would have informed him the ships in question were 30 miles away from each other
• Misled readers that “metered homes pay 60% more for water” by making inappropriate comparisons between metered and unmetered customers with different water companies

Leake has a promising future as a fiction writer …