Johnson to face grilling as more Tories break ranks
Pressure: Poll ratings tumble as Cummings controversy drags on
CONSERVATIVE MPs are to challenge Boris Johnson face to face over his refusal to sack his influential adviser Dominic Cummings.
As public anger about Mr Cummings’s apparent lockdown breaches threaten to engulf the UK government, more than 30 Tories swelled the revolt against the prime minister’s chief aide.
Some warned his failure to quit undermined support for continuing restrictions on the public’s freedoms.
One said the “moral authority” to demand the public’s consent for the fight against coronavirus was being lost, while a second highlighted the impression given of “one rule for them and another for senior government advisers”.
Pressure on Mr Cummings grew when former health secretary Jeremy Hunt said he was guilty of a clear breach of the lockdown rules on three occasions.
Crucially, Mr Johnson will experience the anger in person when he appears before the powerful Commons liaison committee, with several of the Tory questioners among those attacking his backing for Mr Cummings.
One, former Welsh secretary Stephen Crabb, told ‘The Independent’ that Mr Cummings should have stepped down pending an inquiry by the cabinet secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill.
“I thought Dominic Cummings was wrong to arrogantly brush away the allegations when they first appeared. He just made matters worse,” Mr Crabb said.
“People have got every right to ask what on earth he was doing in Durham and Barnard Castle during lockdown.”
Mr Crabb will be joined by Simon Hoare and Caroline Nokes, two Tories who have called openly for Mr Cummings to be dismissed, at the meeting of the committee today.
The controversy has triggered a calamitous plunge in Mr Johnson’s popularity in just a few days, according to data
from polling group Savanta ComRes.
Most of the public now disapproves of the government and the prime minister’s personal ratings also turned negative –dropping from +19pc to -1pc since Friday.
However, No 10 continued to stand by Mr Cummings, who headed the Vote Leave campaign for Brexit, and tried to shut down further questions about the inconsistencies in the account given at his dramatic press conference.
Earlier, Douglas Ross, a junior Scottish minister, quit in protest, saying: “I have constituents who didn’t get to say goodbye to loved ones; families who could not mourn together; people who didn’t visit sick relatives because they followed the guidance of the Government. I cannot in good faith tell them they were all wrong and one senior adviser to the government was right.”
Health secretary Matt Hancock, giving the daily government briefing on the virus, even appeared to agree to pass on a request from a vicar to review all = fines imposed on families travelling – like Mr Cummings – for childcare reasons during lockdown.
Downing Street insisted no review had been conceded.
The gathering storm entirely overshadowed what Mr Hancock called the good news of the lowest number of recorded Covid-19 deaths in the UK for six weeks, including none at all in Northern Ireland.
Durham Police are reported to have begun an investigation into Mr Cummings’s actions, interviewing a witness and gaining access to software to track the movement of a vehicle he used.
But Mr Hancock, at the daily briefing, continued to insist that Mr Cummings’s “exceptional circumstances” made his trip to Durham legitimate.
“My judgment is the same as the prime minister’s judgment,” he said, insisting that the government would be moving on to “deal with other issues” such as treatment for Covid-19.