On 20 November 2025, the Hallett inquiry into the UK Covid experience published its 800-page Module 2 report. An inquiry of, by, and for lawyers, it is a carefully curated political whitewash with no forensic exploration of the truth and no hope of any accountability. 

It collapses the most consequential public policy decisions in British history into a problem of mere timing caused by process failures. Far from revealing what happened, it is a testament to the refusal of the state to admit error. Many leaders are happy to engage in serial apologies and consider reparations in the name of the state they represent for incidents of alleged wrongdoings deep in the past well before their time, especially if these demonstrate their progressive pieties. But they seem incapable of acknowledging, saying sorry for, and offering compensation for instances of states behaving badly during their own time in office.

Far from mollifying critics looking for acknowledgement and accountability, the report will bring back the anger and rage associated with governments’ Covid excesses. It reveals the chair, former Court of Appeal Judge Baroness Heather Hallett, to be science- and numeracy-illiterate, with an inability to grasp complex facts and little capacity for logical reasoning. ‘Had a mandatory lockdown been imposed’ one week earlier, the report concluded, ‘modelling has established that the number of deaths in England in the first wave up until 1 July 2020 would have been reduced by 48% – equating to approximately 23,000 fewer deaths’ (Vol. I, p. 5). 

This is a truly astonishing assertion. It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of modelling. They do not ‘establish’ any conclusions. Rather, they are built on assumptions and their........

© Eurasia Review