In a sentence that may surprise you, Dominic Cummings’ performance at this week’s select committee hearing reminded me of Barack Obama. I said you’d be surprised.

But Mr Cummings’ appearance reminded me of something that the former US president wisely said: “What’s troubling is not the magnitude of our problems but the smallness of our politics.” Quite.

So, has Dominic Cummings lifted the lid on a dangerously incompetent government led by a man who is supposedly unfit to be prime minister? Or was his evidence to a select committee this week motivated by revenge, as a “government source” immediately claimed in the aftermath?

Dominic Cummings’ claims of Covid incompetence will resonate with schools

There’s probably a bit of truth in both interpretations.

The trouble is that, from where I have sat on the fringes of the crisis that has played out over the past year-and-a-bit, far too much of what has happened has resonated with the first of those explanations.

Don’t get me wrong with regards to Mr Cummings. Long before his ludicrous eye-test trip to Barnard Castle, his stock in education circles was pretty low as a result of his stint as Michael Gove’s adviser in the Department for Education, where the pair of them appeared to revel in being needlessly confrontational in their battle with “the blob”.

Nevertheless, his devastating critique of the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic feels less like a man with an axe to grind and more like an account of what actually happened.

It feels like an eternity has passed since March of last year, when the crisis began in earnest. But I can still remember the repeated assurances that the situation was under control and schools would not need to close - right up to the point that everything was most definitely not under control and schools would have to close with 48 hours’ notice.

There’s remarkable synchronicity between those events and Mr Cummings’ account of a prime minister who was too slow to realise the danger of Covid and who considered it a scare story.

Bullish determination to reopen schools 

There might also be some truth in his claims that the prime minister believed Covid was over last summer and delayed the second lockdown in the autumn. I am sure we can all remember the government’s bullish assertion that all schools must open in September full-time for all pupils, and its dismissal of any suggestion of rotas as an act of heresy.

It was immediately apparent that its test and trace system was nowhere near ready for the numbers of tests that were generated by a full return of schools, and the public health system was unable to cope with providing the guidance that schools had been promised they would receive.

The government’s bold words about making education a national priority were not backed up with a system that was fit for purpose, and schools were left to pick up the pieces.

In the meantime, let us not forget, the utter farce over free school meals as the government, on repeated occasions, first refused to make them available to disadvantaged children during holiday periods, and then performed a U-turn. The excellent campaign by the footballer Marcus Rashford was instrumental in the government’s change of heart.

This is what Mr Cummings had to say on this subject: “For example, the whole thing with Rashford, the director of communications said to the prime minister twice, ‘Do not pick a fight with Rashford.’ Obviously, we should do this instead. The prime minister decided to pick a fight and then surrendered twice.

“After that everyone says, ‘Oh, your communications is stupid.’ No, what’s stupid was picking a fight with Rashford over school meals, and what should have happened is just getting the school meals policy right.”

Precisely that.

Ignoring the evidence - again 

Then there is the claim from Mr Cummings that the prime minister failed to listen to evidence from scientists. And, indeed, we too have had our doubts about the government’s claim to be “following the science”. In fact, I wrote about this in a column in Tes, and since then the government has decided to relax rules on face masks despite evidence from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies that appeared to advise the opposite.

Mr Cummings resigned in November, so his evidence doesn’t extend to the chaos that took place over Christmas. But the pattern already established by the government - being too slow to act and then being forced into a rapid lockdown - was all-too evident once more.

On this occasion, the government’s fervour for keeping schools fully open amid soaring Covid cases extended to threatening legal action at the slightest hint of ending in-school teaching early and switching to remote learning.

It then spent the Christmas holidays trying to ram through an on-site lateral flow testing system that was not anywhere near ready to roll out, before bringing primary schools back for a single day, announcing a lockdown, and sending everybody back home again.

Too many mistakes 

The most generous interpretation of all this is that it was a fast-developing situation without parallel. But every time? Over and over again?

Fortunately for the nation - and for the government - science has ridden to the rescue in the form of the near-miracle of vaccines produced in record time.

But even as we emerge from the storm clouds of the past year, the concerns continue, albeit not as prominently in the public eye.

Along with other unions, we’ve been repeatedly requesting data on the impact of the B.1.617.2 Covid variant since early May. A report in The Observer suggests that Downing Street has “leaned on” Public Health England not to publish the data. Public Health England says it will not release the data until “the collection process and data is robust and quality-assured”. None of this feels very satisfactory.

We need a full investigation 

I suspect, at the moment, we all just want to get on with the future rather than unpicking the nightmare of the past year.

But Mr Cummings has at the very least raised some issues that warrant full investigation. The nation - and the schools, colleges, staff, pupils and families who have so often seemed to be caught up in the midst of the chaos - certainly deserve some answers.

A time will come when those who have led the country through the pandemic will have to account for their handling of the crisis, and we’ll find out then to what extent Britons have been “lions led by donkeys”.

Dominic Cummings is no Barack Obama. But he has set out in merciless detail the squalid, unambitious lamentable smallness of our politics.

Geoff Barton is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders