Undermining rules makes aide’s position untenable, say Tories

Backbench MPS call for Cummings to resign or be sacked as anger grows over guidance hypocrisy

CONSERVATIVE MPS voiced their displeasure yesterday at Dominic Cummings’ behaviour as several went public with calls for him to be sacked.

Backbenchers said the position of the Prime Minister’s chief adviser had become “untenable” and would undermine Government attempts to keep the lockdown in place.

A former Tory minister apologised yesterday for initially supporting Mr Cummings over his breach of lockdown rules. Robert Halfon, the former skills minister, expressed “regret” for backing Mr Cummings in a tweet he posted online on Saturday and said he should “face the consequences” for breaking the law.

It came as nine of his colleagues called publicly for Mr Cummings to resign or be sacked, with many others privately telling party whips they want the Prime Minister’s chief adviser gone.

They included former Cabinet minister Caroline Nokes, who said there could not be “one rule for most of us and wiggle room for others”, and Sir Roger Gale, who said Mr Cummings’s position had become “untenable”.

Mr Halfon, a former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, tweeted support for Mr Cummings on Saturday, posting: “Ill couple drive 260+ miles to ensure that their small child can be looked after properly. In some quarters this is regarded as the crime of the century. Is this really the kind of country we are?”

But yesterday Mr Halfon apologised to his constituents as he and other MPS withdrew their support for the No 10 adviser.

The MP for Harlow, in Essex, wrote on his Facebook page: “I would first like to make it clear to residents that I regret writing the tweet yesterday in the way I did about the No10 political adviser and his movements.

“I am really sorry for it. I do not support or condone anyone who has broken the law or regulations. Anyone who has done so should face the consequences.”

He added: “The tweet was wrong because many thousands of people in Harlow and across the country have suffered and struggled enormously during the coronavirus. It has caused significant pain and hardship. My tweet did not recognise that. I am sorry.”

He said that his tweet had been aimed at the couple’s four-year-old son, because he thought that if both Mr Cummings and his wife Mary Wakefield had been ill at the same time, and they had no one to look after their child, it was “within the regulations” to drive to Durham, where Mr Cummings’ parents live.

Mr Halfon indicated he had changed his mind about the legality of Mr Cummings’ actions.

Ms Nokes was among senior Tories who expressed dismay at Mr Cummings’s behaviour, she said: “There

cannot be one rule for most of us and wiggle room for others. My inbox is rammed with very angry constituents and I do not blame them. They have made difficult sacrifices over the course of the last nine weeks.”

Sir Roger Gale, Conservative MP for North Thanet, said: “While as a father and as a grandfather I fully appreciate Mr Cummings’s desire to protect his child, there cannot be one law for the Prime Minister’s staff and another for everyone else. He has sent out completely the wrong message and his position is no longer tenable.”

Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister,

‘I made my views clear to my whip. There cannot be one rule for most of us and wiggle room for others’

said: “If he doesn’t resign, we’ll just keep burning through Boris’s political capital at a rate we can ill afford in the midst of this crisis.

“It is very clear that Dominic travelled when everybody else understood Dominic’s slogans to mean ‘stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives’.”

Craig Whittaker, Conservative MP for Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, also said Mr Cummings’s position was “untenable”.

He tweeted: “You cannot advise the nation one thing then do the opposite.”