After the Post Office, infected blood, Grenfell Tower, Windrush and more, what could fall on the next prime minister’s watch?

Reckonings with shocking national scandals have lately become a defining feature of British public life.

Some, like the Post Office and infected blood scandals, have erupted from cases of wrongdoing hidden in plain sight. Again and again, whistleblowers are shown to have been sidelined, ignored and dismissed.

Simon Case, who was responsible for Covid policy at time, calls Boris Johnson’s Downing Street the ‘worst governing ever seen’

The UK’s most senior civil servant has set out the chaos at the heart of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street, saying good officials were “just being smashed to pieces” while he was not warned in advance about the “eat out to help out” scheme.

In a day of often damning testimony to the inquiry into the pandemic, Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, said Johnson’s No 10 had been involved in the “worst governing ever seen” in the UK.

The most senior civil servant in the UK is to give his testimony, delayed for months, with no shortage of queries to address

The Covid inquiry makes a brief return on Thursday to considering how Westminster and Whitehall responded to the pandemic, as the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, gives evidence delayed for months because of illness.

Case had been due to appear before the inquiry in the autumn, when a series of other top officials appeared, as did politicians who were in leading roles during the time of the pandemic, notably the then prime minister, Boris Johnson. But Case, the most senior civil servant in the UK, had to go on medical leave and his testimony was put back.