Camilla Tominey
Cummings wasn’t contrite, but his forthright display helped us understand why he has remained in post
There was no apology, and no regrets, yet in his hour-long grilling Dominic Cummings managed to present the human being behind the headlines. Like pulling back the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, public perceptions of the “evil genius” responsible for the EU referendum result and Boris Johnson’s ascendancy were temporarily put on hold as the second most powerful man in Government presented his defence.
Smartened up for once in a white shirt, the Durham-born “assistant to the Prime Minister” kept the cameras, and indeed the country, waiting for a good 30 minutes before he made his appearance in the Downing Street garden.
It soon became apparent that the only thing he was going to be saying sorry for was his tardiness.
As soon as he took his seat at a desk placed outside for the occasion, it transpired that the Prime Minister had borrowed his right-hand man’s Brexit slogan and finally taken back control of a situation that has spiralled out of hand since Friday.
Admitting Mr Johnson had ordered him to “clear up the confusion and misunderstanding” over his 264-mile lockdown trip up the A1, the former Vote Leave guru appeared not quite contrite, but certainly contemplative.
We weren’t spared any of the domiciliary details as he gave his blow-by-blow account of how he and his wife, Mary, came down with suspected coronavirus and dealt with the dilemma of looking after their four-year-old son.
Mary had “thrown up” at one point and so had their four-year-old, Cedd. Mr Cummings’s had been so unwell his sight had been affected (yet still he drove to Barnard Castle to “test his vision out”). A sister, nieces and elderly parents in their 70s had all been dragged into the episode – but he hadn’t wanted to trouble the PM with it all because by that point he, too, was “sick in bed”.
As the visceral descriptions of vomit-strewn familial hell rained down on a captive audience, Mr Cummings painted the picture of a man torn between a national emergency and a domestic drama.
Having been filmed running from Downing Street, he’d then had to “drive through the night” to the North East, evoking visions of some horrendous Covid-ridden Cannonball Run.
A new revelation came in the admission that his son had fallen so ill he had been taken by ambulance to hospital in the middle of it all.
Meanwhile, the family home in London had become a “target” with a “bad atmosphere” brewing on the doorstep and attacks mounting up on social media following “inaccurate” reports that Mr Cummings had opposed the lockdown.
“For years I’ve warned of the danger of pandemics,” he insisted.
Sitting behind a desk as he read his prewritten statement gave Mr Cummings the aura of a Scandinavian schoolteacher giving an outdoor assembly in the afternoon sunshine.
At times he appeared a little under duress, while at others there was a palpable sense that he was secretly lapping up all the attention.
It was only after he had delivered his carefully pitched speech that the lesson well and truly began. One by one journalists took to the podium to tear apart Mr Cummings’s version of events.
What stood out was the refreshingly candid nature of his answers – even if onlookers may not have believed them all.
Unlike recent Downing Street press conferences which have seen countless ministers, including Mr Cummings’s boss evade the questions and cut journalists off – he behaved as if he was willing to sit there all day until a line could be drawn under the matter.
This wasn’t just an opportunity for him to argue the “reasonableness” of his actions but also of his character.
“Sometimes I do the right thing, sometimes I make mistakes,” he admitted, seemingly keen to correct the caricature exemplified by David Cameron’s description of him as a “career psychopath”.
Twice he spoke about the “personal hardship endured by millions” in a bid to dispel the suggestion that there was one rule for him, and another for the rest of us.
“I know the British people hate the idea of unfairness,” he said – yet in seeking to blame the press for getting some aspects of the story wrong, Mr Cummings appeared to have borrowed from the playbook of the obfuscating Tory MPS he has made no secret of despising.
It was when discussing the conversations that he did or did not have with the PM about his decision to drive to Durham that he appeared on the shakiest ground.
“Some will say I should have spoken to him before,” he conceded. “But I have to protect his time – his time is the most valuable commodity that exists. I have to make that judgment dozens of times a day.”
Designed to give an insight into the pressures faced by the burden of being Mr Johnson’s unelected deputy, Mr Cummings’s coolness under pressure only served as a reminder of why he has gained a fearsome reputation as No10’s resident enforcer.
Never withering in his responses, but prefacing many of them with a slightly impatient “with respect”, his agile handling of his interrogators – at one point even correcting a false assumption by Robert Peston, ITV’S political editor – hinted at a predilection for playing devil’s advocate.
One imagines Mr Cummings was never the sort of student Oxford peers would pick out for a “quick” answer to an overdue essay on counterfactuals.
Possibly the most startling revelation of them all was that at no point did he offer his resignation.
“Is it the fact that the PM can’t do his job without you?” asked Gary Gibbon, Channel 4’s political editor.
Mr Cummings’s silence on that particular question – one of the few he declined to answer directly – spoke volumes about why he remains in post today.
‘What stood out was the candid nature of his answers – even if onlookers may not have believed them’