Ex-top aide has harsh words for Boris Johnson
Calls Downing Street a ‘failure’ during COVID
LONDON — A former top aide to ex-British prime minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday painted a picture of widespread chaos and dysfunction in the UK government during the coronavirus pandemic.
In keenly awaited testimony to the country’s public inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic, Dominic Cummings was withering about many of the people dealing with the situation, including his former boss, describing a culture of toxic relations and lack of trust — but denied that he had broken any rules.
“I would say, overall, it’s widespread failure, but pockets of excellent people and pockets of excellent teams doing excellent work within an overall dysfunctional system,” said Cummings, a self-styled political disruptor.
In emails and WhatsApp messages that were handed to the inquiry and read out by the lead counsel, Cummings also slammed many in Johnson’s Cabinet and other top officials in expletive-ridden terms.
While apologizing repeatedly for his “deplorable” language that was aired live across British media, Cummings denied he was a misogynist and said the exchanges took place in the midst of the “underlying insanity” that was in place at Johnson’s Downing Street offices.
“My judgment of a lot of senior people was widespread,” said Cummings, who was the prime minister’s chief adviser during the first months of the pandemic in 2020 and at the heart of the UK’s response.
Cummings also said Johnson, who was hospitalized for several days with the virus in April 2020, lacked focus and discipline, constantly changing his mind during the pandemic which made it difficult to set policy.
“Pretty much everyone called him the trolley,” he said, using the British term for a shopping cart.
At one point in May 2020, Cummings became the focal point of the pandemic when it emerged that he had driven 250 miles to his parents’ house while the country was under a “stay-at-home” order and while he was ill with coronavirus. He made a later journey to a scenic town 30 miles away.
At the time Johnson resisted calls to fire him, but Cummings left his job in November 2020 and has fired broadsides at Johnson ever since. He conceded to the inquiry that he left government with someone “unfit for office” at its helm.
During his testimony, he also took a swipe at many of the formal structures of government during the pandemic and how a lack of planning hobbled the immediate response to the virus after it first emerged in China in late 2019.
The Cabinet Office, which coordinates policy around departments, bore the brunt of Cummings’s scorn. Describing it as a “dumpster fire,” he accused it of trying to block a shielding plan for the vulnerable in the days and weeks before Johnson eventually announced a national lockdown on March 23, 2020.
Cummings follows other aides who have painted a picture of Johnson as a leader who was distracted and indecisive during the country’s biggest peacetime crisis.