This country faces its worst crisis since World War II. Tens of thousands have died, and although the pandemic is being brought under control there will be many more deaths.
Our economy is in freefall, and even the most optimistic observers believe we face years of pain and slog just to get back to where this country was before Covid-19 struck.
Amid all these enormous challenges, the argument over whether Dominic Cummings breached the terms of the lockdown, which he had helped to engineer, has suddenly become centre-stage.
The Prime Minister yesterday appeared oddly disconnected from public anger, which is being reflected by a growing number of Tory MPs. He should be concerned when his own supporters are turning on him
I’m afraid Boris Johnson’s vehement, though unconvincing, endorsement of his wayward adviser at yesterday afternoon’s media briefing will have done nothing to dampen down the fires.
His blustering declaration that Mr Cummings had behaved ‘responsibly, legally and with integrity’ will have struck many people — including loyal Tories — as preposterous. His refusal to address specific charges against his adviser left me feeling profoundly depressed.
What Mr Johnson seems not to understand is that Mr Cummings’s apparent infringements bear on the trust, reliability and reputation of this increasingly troubled administration.
No 10 apparently has no sense of how his irresponsible behaviour could undermine the already weakened lockdown. Why should people bother to observe it if one of its architects doesn’t, and gets off scot-free?
Amid all these enormous challenges, the argument over whether Dominic Cummings breached the terms of the lockdown, which he had helped to engineer, has suddenly become centre-stage. He is pictured above leaving Downing Street
Now I happily concede that some of those ganging up against the Prime Minister’s chief adviser are not acting from the purest of motives. They hate Mr Cummings because they regard him as the man who made Brexit happen.
But while we are right to be wary of the rationale of his would-be assassins, we shouldn’t make the mistake of defending Mr Cummings just because we don’t like some of his critics. The times are too grave for such shallow partisanship.
So WHAT are the facts? Despite Mr Johnson’s generalised defence of him last night, it is very hard to conclude that he didn’t breach the lockdown on at least two separate occasions.
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove, an old friend of Mr Cummings, tweeted on Saturday: ‘Caring for your wife and child is not a crime’. Indeed not
First there was the 260-mile car journey from London with his wife Mary Wakefield and four-year-old son on March 31. Mr Cummings’s justification is that his wife already had the virus, and he feared he was about to catch it, as he did. They wanted their son to be in a safe place.
It sounds reasonable. Children come first. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove, an old friend of Mr Cummings, tweeted on Saturday: ‘Caring for your wife and child is not a crime’. Indeed not.
The PM yesterday declared that his adviser had ‘followed the instincts of every father and parent’. Yes, but during the lockdown many parents have been unable to see, or to care for, their children in circumstances far more dire than Mr Cummings’s.
Neither Mr Cummings, nor Mr Gove, nor Mr Johnson has explained why it was necessary to undertake this journey. The couple have relatives and friends in London. Couldn’t they have brought food, and left it outside their front door, as appears to have happened in Durham?
Many people were put in even more unenviable positions by the lockdown — forbidden to visit sick relatives or prevented from attending the funerals of loved ones — but couldn’t bend the rules to suit their predicament. Why should an exception be made for Mr Cummings?
Nor did the hapless Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who was roped in to appear on television programmes yesterday morning without being briefed, answer the question as to whether Mr Cummings, his wife and child broke their long car journey, and possibly infected others.
Slippery politicians are often adept at using their children to deflect criticism. Back in 1990, the then Agriculture Secretary John Selwyn Gummer got his four-year-old daughter to eat a beef burger during the ‘mad cow’ disease epidemic. Disregard the child, and look at the facts, is my recommendation.
A few generous souls may nonetheless be inclined to give Mr Cummings the benefit of the doubt so far as the March 31 journey is concerned. But it is surely impossible to mount any defence against a second accusation.
I’m not referring to the allegation made yesterday by the Sunday Mirror and Observer that Mr Cummings made a subsequent visit from London to Durham on April 19. That has been rejected by No 10 spin doctors, and for the time being I am prepared to believe them.
No, I am thinking of the other allegation, not denied by No 10, that on April 12 Dominic Cummings and Mary Wakefield, both of them now recovered, travelled 30 miles from Durham to Barnard Castle for a walk.
This was undoubtedly in contravention of the rules then in force, which permitted a one-hour walk in the vicinity of one’s own home. The outing took place over the Easter weekend, when we were enjoined by ministers not to stray from home to enjoy the weather.
Under questioning at the media briefing, Mr Johnson refused to address the stroll at Barnard Castle. After all their sacrifices, the British people have the right to expect better than that.
A few generous souls may nonetheless be inclined to give Mr Cummings the benefit of the doubt so far as the March 31 journey is concerned. But it is surely impossible to mount any defence against a second accusation. He is pictured leaving 10 Downing Street on Sunday
Of course, the walk wasn’t the greatest sin in the world. The point is that Mr Cummings is the Prime Minister’s chief adviser — arguably the second most powerful political figure in the land — and helped to draw up the rules. If anyone was honour bound to observe them, he was.
Moreover, he and his wife knew they were at fault. When Ms Wakefield came to write an account of their illnesses in the Spectator magazine, she suggested they had been in London for the duration. She realised the truth might damage both of them.
Mr Cummings has arrogantly conveyed his belief that this is a non-story, and chided journalists outside his house for presuming to question him. It would be easier to be sympathetic towards him if he had the grace to show some contrition, or a simple awareness that he broke the rules.
As it is, people may discern an elitist assumption in No 10 that there is one law for people like him and his wife and other privileged members of Boris Johnson’s inner circle — and another for the rest of us.
Under questioning at the media briefing, Mr Johnson refused to address the stroll at Barnard Castle. After all their sacrifices, the British people have the right to expect better than that
The Prime Minister yesterday appeared oddly disconnected from public anger, which is being reflected by a growing number of Tory MPs. He should be concerned when his own supporters are turning on him.
I do understand that he likes Mr Cummings, and treasures his formidable analytical mind. The PM knows that without his original and iconoclastic adviser by his side, he might not have seen off Jeremy Corbyn so triumphantly in last December’s election.
But none of this justifies the way in which he exculpated his friend and eminence grise — without apology or, seemingly, any sense of the offence that may exist among millions of reasonable people.
There are some laws in politics that can’t be defied. One of them is that rulers should not elevate themselves above the ruled. That has been Mr Cummings’s unpardonable mistake at a time of national crisis.
The danger for the PM is that in blindly protecting his adviser, he will damage himself and the Government. It’s hard to see how he can climb down after yesterday’s atrocious performance, though Mr Cummings could still save him by falling on his sword.