WE WANT BORIS TO SACK HIM
Shock poll reveals public’s anger at PM adviser ++ Scots minister quits as Tory MPs rebel ++ Police probe begins
BORIS Johnson’s bid to save Dominic Cum- mings suffered a major blow last night as Tory voters demanded that he be fired for breaking lockdown rules. a majority of Conservative supporters think Mr Cummings lied – and nearly one in two tories do not even believe the Prime Minister genuinely thinks he is innocent.
instead, they say Mr Johnson is giving his Downing street righthand man special protection.
the scale of the tory revolt became clear after almost 40 of the party’s MPs called for Mr
Cummings to resign. the PM also suffered a government resignation after scotland Office minister Douglas Ross quit.
the Moray MP said he could not get his ‘head around’ Mr Cummings’s excuse that he had driven for 30 minutes to test his eyesight and then 30 minutes to return.
Mr Ross said: ‘i cannot in good faith tell [my constituents] they
were all wrong and one senior adviser to the Government was right.’
Mr Ross’s decisive action prompted Scottish Tory leader Jackson Carlaw to urge Mr Cummings to quit, backed by his party in Scotland.
A new poll shows Tory support haemorrhaging as a result of Mr Johnson’s refusal to sack Mr Cummings for driving his family 260 miles to Durham during the lockdown, a visit that then included a 60-mile round trip to a beauty spot.
A total of 66 per cent of all voters say he should resign and only 17 per cent say he should keep his job.
Among Conservative supporters, 55 per cent say he should stand down and 33 per cent say he should stay.
The PM’s personal ratings have dropped by five points since the scandal broke on Friday, with a seven-point gain for Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer who is now snapping at his heels.
An overwhelming seven out of ten members of the public say Mr Johnson’s government thinks it is ‘one rule for them and another for everyone else’, according to the JL Partners survey for the Mail.
Other developments included:
A total of 2,291 people have now died in Scotland after testing positive for Covid19, up by 18 from 2,273 on Monday;
UK deaths from the virus have fallen to their lowest level for six weeks, with a total of 134 recorded yesterday;
Nicola Sturgeon confirmed she will roll out her ‘test and protect’ strategy as she prepares to ease some of Scotland’s lockdown restrictions;
Antiviral drug remdesivir was given the go-ahead for Covid-19 patients after early clinical trials showed it could improve recovery time by four days;
Education Secretary John Swinney said the reopening date of August 11 for all schools was ‘set in stone’, but admitted scientific advice might change.
The Mail poll came as it was revealed police have interviewed a witness who saw Dominic Cummings allegedly breaking lockdown rules.
They have begun investigating complaints against the PM’s adviser at the request of the local crime commissioner. On Monday evening two detectives took a detailed statement from retired chemistry teacher Robin Lees who reported seeing Mr Cummings in Barnard Castle, County Durham, on April 12.
According to today’s poll, many former Labour voters in the socalled ‘Red Wall’ of Commons seats in the North of England and the Midlands, who backed Mr Johnson in last year’s election, believe his team is acting like the privileged ‘elite’ they once denounced.
Working class ‘C1/C2’ voters are more likely to think the PM’s administration is behaving as though ‘it is one rule for them and another rule for everyone else’ (72 per cent), and more likely to say Mr Cummings is not telling the truth (69 per cent), than voters overall.
It also shows discontent with Mr Johnson’s handling of the issue: a total of 72 per cent of all voters say the PM, who admitted two days ago that he had known about Mr Cummings’s trip since March, should have spoken up sooner.
In a dramatic reversal of fortunes since his landslide election victory over Jeremy Corbyn six months ago, the Tories are seen as far more out of touch than Labour.
Mr Cummings’s attempt to prove his innocence at a press conference on Thursday seems to have backfired. A total of 66 per cent, including 52 per cent of Tories, do not think he told the truth.
His claim that while in Durham he drove to Barnard Castle with his wife and young child, to ‘check his eyesight’ before driving back to London after recovering from Covid-19 is dismissed with contempt. A total of 78 per cent overall, including 66 per cent of Tories, do not believe him.
Similarly, a majority of all voters reject his explanation for driving to Durham in the first place to get childcare help.
Nearly six out of ten members of the public say Mr Cummings came across as ‘arrogant’ at the press conference; 8 per cent think he was ‘sympathetic’; only 4 per cent viewed him as ‘remorseful’. A total of 82 per cent of all voters believe he should say sorry.
And 76 per cent of Tories want him to apologise compared with 19 per cent of party supporters who say he should not do so.
The survey kills off Mr Johnson’s
‘now Labour’s Keir Starmer is snapping at the heels of Mr Johnson
hope that Tory supporters would rally round his bid to save Mr Cummings, who masterminded the Brexit victory in the EU referendum and played a key role in helping the Tory Party to crush Labour in the December election.
A total of 63 per cent, including 51 per cent of Tories, are calling on the Prime Minister to fire Mr Cummings.
A total of 66 per cent, including 52 per cent of Conservatives, say the Prime Minister’s aide is not telling the truth overall.
Mr Cummings’s claim that he behaved ‘legally and responsibly’ is rejected by 71 per cent of voters, including 56 per cent of Tories.
The poll also reinforces warnings by police chiefs and scientists that Mr Cummings’s conduct – and Mr Johnson’s refusal to fire him – could have serious repercussions in the fight against coronavirus.
A total of 80 per cent of all voters said Mr Cummings had broken the lockdown, while 68 per cent supported Government science adviser Professor Stephen Reicher’s claim that the Prime Minister had effectively ‘trashed’ the public safety campaign by defending Mr Cummings.
A total of 65 per cent of respondents said that the Cummings scandal made it less likely that people would obey all of the Government’s lockdown rules.
Some 23 per cent said it would make them less likely to selfisolate for 14 days even if they had no symptoms, while 16 per cent said they would be more likely to do so.
JL Partners interviewed 1,038 adults online yesterday.
IT IS claimed by his supporters that the outrage over Dominic Cummings’s decision to flout lockdown rules is largely the confection of a cynical media. They argue that what was a minor infraction at worst, has been blown out of all proportion, in a blatant bid to damage the Prime Minister through his most senior adviser. Inside the Metropolitan bubble his enemies may be howling for his head. But with ordinary voters, they say, the story simply doesn’t ‘cut through’.
Our poll today shows how spectacularly wrong they are. In the court of public opinion, Mr Cummings is very definitely guilty as charged. Eighty per cent of people believe he broke lockdown rules. Almost as many disbelieve his excuses as to why.
Sixty per cent want him to resign. A slightly larger proportion say if he doesn’t, Boris Johnson should sack him. Most devastatingly, 55 per cent of Tory voters believe he must go.
Middle Britain is angry. And their anger will linger as long as Mr Cummings remains in post. It’s true of course, that many of his critics are motivated by prejudice. The Mail is emphatically not among them.
This paper has nothing personal against Mr Cummings, indeed we admire his intellect and prodigious campaigning abilities. But our belief – clearly shared by most of the country – is that he broke lockdown rules he himself helped to devise and should be held to account.
His attempts at self-justification have been implausible to say the least, especially the ‘eyesight-testing’ excuse for why he went on a jaunt from Durham to Barnard Castle with his wife and son. Unsurprisingly, 78 per cent don’t believe him.
It pains us to say, but he is damaged goods, and by hanging on in Downing Street, he provides a rallying point for antiTory sentiment. With the economic pain of Covid-19 just beginning, that is something Mr Johnson can’t afford.