Calls mount for Johnson to dismiss Cummings
LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday faced a mounting internal rebellion, including a ministerial resignation, over a scandal around his top aide Dominic Cummings taking a cross-country trip during the coronavirus lockdown.
Dozens of Conservative lawmakers have now demanded the controversial adviser quit or be sacked while Douglas Ross, a minister for Scotland, resigned in protest, as the political crisis continues unabated.
“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,” Mr Ross said in a statement.
“I cannot in good faith tell them they were all wrong and one senior adviser to the government was right.”
The government said it regretted his decision, but the resignation piled more pressure on it and Mr Cummings.
He held a press conference on Monday to justify driving his wife and young son on a 425-kilometre trip from London to Durham in northeast England in late March, during the height of the outbreak.
Earlier that week Mr Johnson had introduced a lockdown requiring people to stay at home — barring exceptional circumstances — or face fines. Mr Cummings, who had virus symptoms around the time of the trip while his wife was also suffering from Covid-19, has claimed he complied with the guidance because childcare needs were one such exception.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock was the latest minister to defend Mr Cummings, saying “what he did was within the guidelines”.
But following a question from a priest during the briefing over whether anybody fined for being outside their homes due to childcare issues would now be reimbursed, he pledged the government would review the matter.
The prime minister has called Cummings’ actions “plausible”. But Jackson Carlaw, the leader of the Conservatives in Scotland, said his most trusted adviser should consider quitting. “Given the furore... if I were Mr Cummings I would be considering my position,” he said.
Mr Carlaw’s comments followed a rising tide of calls from fellow Tories for the adviser to go. A host of smaller opposition parties also called for Mr Cummings’ ousting.
“There cannot be one rule for those involved in formulating public health advice and another for the rest of us,” the Scottish National Party, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and others said in the letter.