TORY FURY EXPLODES
In biggest rebellion PM has faced, MPs from all wings of party line up to tell him: Cummings MUST go now
TORY MPs staged an extraordinary public revolt yesterday to demand that the Prime Minister sack his most senior aide.
In the biggest open rebellion of Boris Johnson’s premiership, a dozen defied party whips and called for Dominic Cummings’ departure from Downing Street.
Former Brexit minister Steve Baker was the first to break ranks as he toured the TV studios and said that Mr Cummings ‘must go’ for driving 260 miles from London to County Durham during the lockdown.
He told Sky’s Sophy Ridge programme that Mr Cummings ‘holds in contempt any effort to hold him accountable to others’ and that ‘no one is indispensable’.
Although the pair have a notoriously fraught relationship – with Mr Cummings previously branding a Tory group which Mr Baker chaired a ‘tumour’ – other MPs on all sides of the party then followed suit and demanded Mr Johnson act. North Dorset MP Simon Hoare became the second Tory MP to call for Mr Cummings’ departure, saying he was ‘wounding’ the Government.
He tweeted: ‘With the damage Mr Cummings is doing to the Government’s reputation he must consider his position. Lockdown has had its challenges for everyone.
‘It’s his cavalier “I don’t care; I’m cleverer than you” tone that infuriates people. He is now wounding the PM/Govt & I don’t like that.’
Tory MP Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons education committee, even apologised for tweeting his support of Mr Cummings on Saturday. He said the PM’s aide should ‘face the consequences of breaking the law’.
In a statement on his Facebook page, the MP for Harlow said: ‘I would first like to make it clear to residents that I regret writing the tweet yesterday in the way I did about the Number 10 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.’
In his original tweet, Mr Halfon had written: ‘Ill couple drive 260+ miles to ensure that their small child can be looked after properly.
In some quarters this is regarded as crime of the century. Is this really the kind of country we are?’
But yesterday he said: ‘The tweet was wrong because many thousands of people in Harlow and across the country have suffered and struggled enormously during the coronavirus. I am sorry.’
Former minister Caroline Nokes also waded in, saying: ‘I made my views clear to my whip yesterday. There cannot be one rule for most of us and wriggle 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, the Conservative MP for North Thanet, tweeted: ‘While as a father and as a grandfather I fully appreciate Mr Cummings’ 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.’
As Mr Cummings came under fire from MPs, a big screen mounted on a van appeared outside his London home and played a clip from Mr Johnson’s March 23 address to the nation where he explained the stay-at-home coronavirus lockdown rules. It was organised by the campaign group Led By Donkeys.
Meanwhile, Mr Cummings’ wife, Mary Wakefield, a columnist and editor for The Spectator magazine, was seen leaving the family home yesterday.
At an extraordinary press briefing, Mr Johnson defended his aide and said he had concluded that Mr Cummings had ‘no alternative’ but to travel to the North East for childcare ‘when both he and his wife were about to be incapacitated by coronavirus’. He said: ‘In every respect, he has acted responsibly, legally and with integrity.’
After the press briefing, other Tory MPs came forward to criticise the PM’s handling of Mr Cummings. David Warburton, the MP Somerton and Frome, tweeted: ‘I’m unconvinced by the PM’s defence of Cummings.
‘We’ve all been tasked with tempering our parental, and other, instincts by strictly adhering to the Govt guidance.’ Mr Cummings left Number 10 Downing Street just after 6pm, and gave no response to reporters’ questions as he drove away, six hours after first arriving.
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