Trump was lambasted as a Covid conspiracy theorist... but he may have been right all along, says Jacob Rees Mogg

Much later, one of its key signatories, Peter Dazzak, was head of the Eco Health Alliance, a research group that worked directly with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This was a clear conflict of interest.

The then President Donald Trump later echoed claims of the Wuhan Lab leak theory, and he was lambasted as a conspiracy theorist too, though he did sometimes give people that impression in other areas.

So, not unreasonably indeed, his own chief scientist, Anthony Fucci undermined Trump, referring to a study consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.

In February 2021, the World Health Organisation suggested the lab leak theory was "extremely unlikely". Despite serious questions about the limited access permitted by the Chinese Communist Party for the investigation.

It later emerged that American federal funding was provided to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for virus research. Dispute took place between Senator Rand Paul and Anthony Fucci over whether the funding could have been used to create Covid like viruses. And now we know that two US agencies, the Department of Energy and the FBI have concluded with some confidence that the virus originated in a lab.

Indeed, as the likes of Matthew the Lord Ridley have pointed out, there were obvious components to the structural nature of the virus that were unusual and suggested some form of human intervention.

The evidence clearly points to the likelihood that the virus came from a lab. In other words, the conspiracy theorists seem to have been on the right track.

Earlier this year, the former US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who said this to US congressional committee when asked by government scientists, were reluctant to entertain the idea of the lab leak.

I think the best evidence of that is their own conversations which which say that they didn't want unwarranted or unwanted or they think the term was unwanted attention to the relationships that were taking place between Western virologists and those working within maybe the the the Wuhan you think maybe virology.

And so here we have the former director of national intelligence claiming the reason government scientists were keen to dispel suggestions of a lab leak was because of their own personal links to the lab in question. But these problems expand extend to the UK.

Michael Gove gave credence to the idea this morning but he was very quickly shut down.

Why wasn't the question of the lab leak theory included in the terms of reference of the inquiry? It's the foundational question. Yet this very expensive inquiry just wants to conclude that we ought to have locked down sooner and more brutally.

Anything that does not fit in with its predetermined narrative is excluded, including the source of the virus.

If we're to restore public trust in the post-Covid world, the question of the lab leak must be at the forefront of the Covid inquiry. We must also ensure that lockdowns never happen again.