Johnson stands by aide over 250-mile lockdown trip

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday he wouldn’t fire his chief aide for allegedly violating the national coronavirus lockdown rules that he helped to create.

Johnson defied a growing clamor for the dismissal of adviser Dominic Cummings, who drove 250 miles from London to his parents’ home in Durham, in northeast England, with his wife and son as he was coming down with COVID-19 at the end of March.

Britain’s lockdown, which began March 23, stipulated that people should remain at their primary residence, leaving only for essential local errands and exercise. Anyone with coronavirus symptoms was told to completely isolate themselves.

Cummings says he traveled to be near extended family because his wife was showing COVID-19 symptoms, he correctly thought he was also infected and he wanted to ensure that his 4-year-old son was looked after.

Johnson said he had held “extensive” conversations with Cummings and concluded he acted “responsibly, legally and with integrity.”

He told a news conference that said Cummings “followed the instincts of every father and every parent.”

But several lawmakers from Johnson’s Conservative Party joined the opposition in calling for Cummings to go.

“Dominic Cummings has a track record of believing that the rules don’t apply to him and treating the scrutiny that should come to anyone in a position of authority with contempt,” tweeted Conservative lawmaker Damian Collins. “The government would be better without him.”