MORNING SERIAL
IN A depressing prognosis of the future he said: “If we look at the industry, not just in Wales, but in the UK, people are talking about 30% cuts. If you think about it, we had a 10-year backlog, aviation is going to be depressed now for a number of years. It’s going to take at least three years to recover, and possibly a lot longer. We may never recover to the levels we had, there are all sorts of scenarios. So, 30% is my best guess if you factor that across Wales, 23,000 people, that’s probably 7,000 or 8,000 jobs are going to go – that’s the stark bottom line.”
Meanwhile in Westminster a more personal politics was in play.
At the daily lobby briefing with the Prime Minister’s spokesman almost every day the same questions were put to him by journalists: “Where is Dominic Cummings and where did he self-isolate when he was suspected of having the virus?” and “When are you going to release the report into Home Secretary Priti Patel’s bullying allegations?”
Week after week, these same questions were asked. The answer to the Cummings question was always the same: that he was self-isolating at home.
The Priti Patel report was a little more complicated. At the end of February the top civil servant in the Home Office Sir Philip Rutnam resigned and began a claim for constructive dismissal against the Government. He well and truly pointed the finger at Priti Patel for creating a campaign against him. He said: “In the last 10 days, I have been the target of a vicious and orchestrated briefing campaign. It has been alleged that I have briefed the media against the Home Secretary. This – along with many other claims – is completely false. The Home Secretary categorically denied any involvement in this campaign to the Cabinet Office. I regret I do not believe her.”
Following these accusations of bullying, which Priti Patel strenuously denied, an investigation had been ordered. That report was asked for almost every day by journalists and every day the spokesman for the Prime Minister said it was not finished or ready to be released.
Lockdown Wales by Will Hayward £9.99 www.serenbooks.com/ productdisplay/lockdown-wales ISBN 9781781726013