UK minister quits as row over PM Johnson aide’s lockdown drive continues
UNITED KINGDOM - A junior minister in the Boris Johnson government resigned yesterday as the controversy over the prime minister’s chief adviser breaking lockdown rules continued to fester, despite the aide giving a detailed account of his actions on monday. Douglas Ross, minister for Scotland, referred to millions of people following government instructions to stay at home, while aide
Dominic Cummings travelled over 260 miles to Durham in north-east England from London with family in end-march. Ross said: “I haven’t commented publicly on the situation with Dominic Cummings as I have waited to hear the full details. I welcome the statement to clarify matters, but there remain aspects of the explanation which I have trouble with. As a result I have resigned as a government Minister”. “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,” he wrote in his resignation letter. Attempts by Johnson and Cummings to brazen out the row were met by furious headlines, not only in the left-leaning newspapers such as The Guardian and Mirror, but also Conservative-supporting mass circulation tabloids such as the Daily Mail. Cummings sought to justify his movements even when he and his wife had coronavirus symptoms, but questions remained after he was provided a rare forum in Downing Street to address the press on live television on monday. (Hindustan Times)