Boris Johnson's former director of communications, Lee Cain, has said the numerous Covid-related U-turns made during Johnson's government resembled a "slow-moving car crash", with No 10 repeatedly making the same avoidable mistakes. Speaking on The Independent's In the Room podcast, Cain said the pattern of reversals frustrated the communications team, though he noted that even in politics, repeated errors eventually forced ministers to start listening.

Cain, who worked in Downing Street from July 2019 to the end of 2020, cited several examples of the government's flip-flopping, including Johnson's repeated denial of a second national lockdown before one began on 5 November, his encouragement for children to return to school in January 2021 only to reverse course and close schools that same evening, and the scrapping of the controversial A-level grading algorithm the previous August. Cain also recalled internal discussions early in the pandemic about keeping pubs and bars open while discouraging visits, an idea he believed came from Johnson himself and warned at the time would inevitably be reversed within 24 hours.