PM gambles by backing adviser
BESTABLISHED 1855 oris Johnson’s personal loyalty to Dominic Cummings is commendable but is it in the best interests of the country? The Prime Minister’s first duty is to the UK, not to the career of his chief adviser.
Mr Johnson appears to have gambled mightily that the central role occupied by Mr Cummings in his Government is so important that it offsets the damage it is doing, which is considerable.
There is deep unease on the Tory back benches that the Prime Minister has put his adviser above the nation and their concerns are unlikely to have been assuaged by his performance at the Downing Street press conference last night.
The central problem for Mr Johnson is that, in sticking by Mr Cummings, he risks jeopardising the entire anti-covid strategy. This is based on maintaining the British public’s trust in the integrity of the public health message in order to accept restrictions on their liberties never seen before.
Unquestionably, that has been harmed by the way this affair has been handled. Ministers have lined up to deny Mr Cummings has broken the rules and yet there is prima facie evidence that he did.
He drove his ill wife, at a time when he thought he might also be coming down with the virus, 250 miles north to Durham to isolate in a property close to where his parents live.
Mr Johnson said he had “followed the instincts of every father and parent and … in every respect he has answered responsibly, legally and with integrity and with the aim of stopping the spread of the virus and saving lives”.
But where does it say in the guidance that we can follow instincts rather than stick to the rules?
These explanations are questionable insofar as Mr Cummings’s wife was sick with the virus and therefore should have isolated at her primary residence, making separate arrangements for their child as everyone else has had to do.
Otherwise, we are invited to subscribe to a strategy whereby healthy people are required to stay indoors, whereas contagious people can travel the length of the country.
We do not dispute that Mr Cummings took decisions that he considered to be in the best interests of his family. However, millions of us have been prevented from acting for the good of our families; many have not been able to visit ageing parents for months, and others sadly never got a chance to say goodbye to loved ones now lost.
Some dismiss this is as a storm in a teacup and maintain there are more important issues at stake as, indeed, there are. Mr Johnson outlined a few of them last night, including the proposed phased opening of schools from next Monday. But at the same time the Government is tightening the screw by imposing a 14-day quarantine on travellers to the UK, a measure reciprocated over the weekend by France.
This policy is opposed by many Tory MPS who fear, as we do, that it will deepen the economic recession and put the UK at a competitive disadvantage, let alone wreck any chance of a continental summer holiday.
Why should people trust the Government to have made the right decision here when the rules around the lockdown are open to interpretation based on instinct and reasonableness?
In defending Mr Cummings at the Downing Street briefing on Saturday, Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, said those shielding with coronavirus symptoms should do so “in the best and most practical way”.
In that case, can people returning from a holiday and required to self-isolate invoke a “reasonableness clause” to visit their relatives; and if they are not showing any symptoms, why not?
However, there is more to this affair than allegations of hypocrisy in high places. Mr Cummings has become a divisive and distracting figure in the Government just at the point where unity of purpose is an absolute requirement.
In the febrile minds of some people this story has become tied up with his central role in delivering Brexit and last December’s election victory. Certainly, there is an element of political pointscoring in the fact that Left-leaning newspapers have led the charge against him.
But we are well beyond that now. Many Conservatives, including Cabinet ministers, have deep misgivings over the influence Mr Cummings wields and the difficulties this is posing to sensible and, yes, reasonable decisions being taken about the country’s future.
How are Tory MPS supposed to insist that their constituents observe rules that do not seem to apply to those at the top of Government? Opinion polls illustrate the public anger over what has happened and Mr Johnson’s insistence that Mr Cummings had not broken the rules did not convince.
Mr Johnson is determined to defend his adviser but he will be the one most damaged by dysfunctionality in the administration, something the country can ill afford.
In the end, the Prime Minister must decide whether the authority of his Government and the public’s trust in him to see the country through its gravest crisis for 70 years is enhanced or diminished by the continued presence of Mr Cummings.
Where does it say in the guidance that we can follow instincts rather than stick to the rules?