As the garden grilling wore on, my goodwill fizzled out like damp charcoal
He sounded practically human at first. But...
HOW apt that it was perfect barbecue weather when Dominic Cummings appeared in the Downing Street garden for his media grilling. The senior government adviser had been marinating in a sauce of molten opprobrium since his illicit lockdown dash to Durham became public news.
He had also been highly seasoned by the chilli rage of a nation who demanded – and deserved – answers from this white-shirted mutineer who laid down the rules only to break them himself.
One law for him and another law for us? No wonder everyone is so furious. Fire up the coals, people, it is time for the skewering. This was going to be juicy. And bloody, too? One could only hope.
To be fair, Mr Cummings started well. He read from a typed speech with the weary air of a man with better things to do.
Some passages were marked out with yellow highlighter, perhaps the ones that read DO NOT APOLOGISe UNDeR ANY CIRCUMSTANCeS.
For Dominic, sorry was indeed the hardest word, because he did not utter it once in any meaningful way.
Having never heard him speak before, I was rather pleased that he didn’t talk in a tinny vocal falsetto like a Smash potato Martian wondering what the pesky earth people were moaning about now.
Instead he has a warm, Northern lilt that makes him seem practically human, almost likeable. especially when he was earnestly presenting himself as the kind of caring husband and father only trying to do the best for his wife and child.
Why did he make the 260-mile dash? His wife was ill, he felt ill. He thought the best thing was to pack their four-year-old son in the car and make the long journey north. ‘In retrospect I should have made this statement earlier,’ he said, which was the statement about a statement that was the understatement of the century.
He admitted to ‘being conflicted,’ but felt there was ‘nobody in London we could reasonably ask to look after our child’.
THe family had options, which included driving to an isolated cottage on his father’s farm. So that is what they did – and I don’t feel that the Cummings family should be punished by the politics of jealousy and spite for having those options in the first place. In the circumstances, much of his behaviour seems reasonable and understandable. Many parents might have even sympathised with his plight if Cummings had admitted to all this in the beginning.
His biggest mistake was trying to arrogantly tough it out, believing that somehow he alone is above censure and what he sees as petty politicking.
His second mistake was trying to blame the media in general for everything. And to explain away a day trip to a bluebell wood and Barnard Castle as an expedition to test his eyesight? Should have gone to Specsavers, Dom.
As the press conference wore on, my goodwill towards him began to fizzle out like damp charcoal.
Under questioning from journalists, the clash of detail and explanation began to tip the scales against him as he impressed upon the nation that he was right and everyone else was wrong.
The public needed a reason to believe in him, some logic and thought that we could understand. We were yearning for the authentic and the real – but all we got was a lot of oily flannel about rather a lot of car journeys that seemed unnecessary.
Scant comfort for those of us who obeyed the lockdown to the letter, at great personal and emotional expense.
And we can all recognise carefully calibrated bluster when we hear it, yellow highlighter notwithstanding.
‘With respect,’ he kept saying throughout the drawn-out press conference. ‘With respect,’ he would say through gritted teeth, although he didn’t mean it at all. Instead of respect he was bristling with irritation, hating every minute, seemingly convinced of his own moral certitude.
Sitting in this beautiful garden, perfumed with roses and great privilege, dead centre in the beating heart of government, here was a civilian trying to explain to the masses that he was neither privileged nor special. And complaining that even though he was ostensibly visiting a second home on his father’s estate with only private woodlands to walk in, he was not living in the lap of luxury.
‘It’s just concrete blocks, it’s not nice,’ he said, tone deaf to the prevailing winds of discord howling around him.
ONe supposes he became a special adviser because he would be unelectable as a politician. Too maverick, too much of a rebel for comfort, too haughty for the concerns of the common man.
Look at that great Cummings brain, pulsing under the tanned cranium of a man who’s recently spent a lot of time in the Durham sunshine.
His friends see him as a charming revolutionary, but outsiders only see the studied and deliberate iconoclasm of a 48-year-old man who likes to dress like a nineyear-old skateboarder.
Costume or disguise? It is hard to say, but one must acknowledge that attention-seeking comes in many forms, not all of them immediately understandable.
There have been many regrettable comic book capers over the last few months as the Government struggled to cope with the pandemic – but today’s smoking pantomime has to be one of the worst moments yet.
I suspect that people will still feel that Dominic Cummings did wrong and tried to weasel out of it, without much success. ‘I know that British people hate the idea of unfairness,’ he said today. That’s right, Dominic. We do.
You made your own interpretation of the rules, you don’t regret what you did – and for now you are just going to have to contend with the unceasing fury you have unleashed. With respect.