Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

John Lee

What the Dominic Cummings saga tells us about lockdown

Remember 'following the science' on Covid? It feels like a while. That was supposed to be about how we responded to a new virus posing an existential threat to society. But we now seem to have moved on to a purely political phase, focussed on rules written in the early phase of the epidemic (based on incomplete and mistaken information) before it became clearer that the threat we face is pretty far from existential. While there’s plenty we don’t know about Covid, the big-picture science has been settled for some time already. As epidemics go it’s not that bad. It kills mainly the very old and infirm; children and fit people under 60ish often get away with mild or asymptomatic infection. Those who become ill do not, in fact, die like flies.

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

Why does this pro-EU scientist dislike Dominic Cummings so much?

The brilliant, in his own mind, Dr Mike Galsworthy has been one of the louder voices calling for Dominic Cummings to be sacked immediately.  You may remember Dr Mike from the Brexit debate. Affiliated to the Labour party, he set up Scientists For EU, regularly spewing out a screed of tendentious, unscientific, pro-EU bollocks. His Wikipedia entry suggests that he 'persistently seeks clarification and sees it as a central science mission in the era of fake news' and also that he 'opposes what he sees as the debasement of knowledge in populist politics'. Does he indeed.  You might think that he would consider the Cummings story to be largely fake news and be disinclined to resort to hyperbole. Not a bit of it.

Matthew Lynn

Britain should demand a level playing field from the EU

It will receive €9 billion (£8 billion) in free money from the government. It will be protected from any threat of a takeover. And, with a restored balance sheet, it will be free to make predatory acquisitions across the continent. It is of course Lufthansa, the German airline, which has just been given a massive package of financial support by its government. But hold on. Isn't there meant to be a level playing field across Europe? Over the course of the negotiations on a trade deal with the European Union, we have had a series of high-handed lectures from Michel Barnier demanding the UK sign up to EU oversight of state aid and competition rules. Apparently, it would be intolerable to have a major competitor, especially one right next door, playing by different rules.

Steerpike

Watch: Gove comes unstuck defending Cummings’ road trip

Dominic Cummings doesn't have a huge number of supporters in the newspapers this morning, but Michael Gove is doing his best to defend the PM's chief aide. Asked by LBC's Nick Ferrari whether he would, like Cummings, go on a sixty-mile trip to test his eyesight, Gove suggested he would do, before abruptly changing tack: Gove: 'I have on occasions in the past driven with my wife in order to make sure I...what's the right way of putting it?' Ferrari: 'I'm staggered. I don't know how you're going to get out of this but it's going to be fun.' Gove: 'I think people who know me would know I'm not an authority on driving...' Ferrari: 'I merely asked you whether you'd been on a sixty-mile round trip to test your eyesight and you said you had. I mean, why not go to Specsavers?

Robert Peston

Dominic Cummings has become a symbol of a very British inequality

Dominic Cummings knows all about how perception damages public confidence in political parties. Here he is in June 2017: 'People think, and by the way I think most people are right: ‘The Tory party is run by people who basically don’t care about people like me’. That is what most people in the country have thought about the Tory party for decades. I know a lot of Tory MPs and I am sad to say the public is basically correct. Tory MPs largely do not care about these poorer people. They don’t care about the NHS. And the public has kind of cottoned on to that.' And this is what he said yesterday about why it was OK to walk in the Durham woods, when he should have been strictly quarantining because of his Covid-19 symptoms.

John Connolly

Minister quits over Dominic Cummings’s lockdown trip

Douglas Ross, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, has announced that he is resigning from his government position, following the controversy over the Number 10 adviser Dominic Cummings’s trip to Durham during the lockdown. In a letter outlining his reasons for resigning, Ross acknowledged that while Cummings’s decision to travel to Durham may have been ‘well meaning’ and intended to be in the best interests of his family: ‘Mr Cummings’s interpretation of the government advice was not shared by the vast majority of people who have done as the government asked.

Steerpike

Listen: Bishop taken to task over anti-Cummings tweet

What should one expect from a spiritual leader? Knowledge of the scripture? Care for his flock? Or perhaps even a degree of humility? It seems Dr John Inge, the Bishop of Worcester, has added political punditry to his list of holy attributes. (You may remember Inge for previous divine interventions, such as suggesting that a no-deal Brexit would go against Christ's teachings.) This time, though, it seems Dominic Cummings is the subject of his pious ire.  https://twitter.com/BishopWorcester/status/1264668936949334028?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Inge was invited on to BBC Radio 4's Today programme to discuss his criticisms.

Monday

Cindy Yu

Has Cummings done enough to calm Tory MPs?

12 min listen

In an unprecedented press conference today, Dominic Cummings explained the circumstances in which he took his family to Durham, and the exact timeline. He struck a sincere tone, but stopped short of apologising. Has he said enough to stem the backlash?

Melanie McDonagh

Dominic Cummings’s lockdown critics will never be happy

Happy now? Thought not. Dominic Cummings has delivered his statement and answered questions but still the critics aren’t appeased. Not at all. In fact, the tenor of the questions that were put to him suggested that quite a few of the journalists lucky enough to be socially distancing in the Downing Street rose garden, plus those listening at a distance, hadn’t been listening to a word he said. Didn’t he realise that there were people out there who hadn’t seen their elderly parents or grandparents for months and how would they feel knowing that he’d been gadding up to Durham to see his?

Katy Balls

Dominic Cummings’s revealing press conference

Dominic Cummings spent the sunny Bank Holiday Monday answering questions from journalists in the Downing Street rose garden. After days of negative headlines and a growing backlash from Tory MPs over allegations that the Prime Minister's senior aide broke lockdown rules, Cummings took the unusual step in order to try to explain the rationale behind his movements.  The senior No. 10 aide stopped short of apologising for his actions.

Brendan O’Neill

The real Dominic Cummings scandal

The media’s Dominic Cummings story has completely collapsed. He did NOT go to Durham a second time, which was reported on the front page of the Sunday Mirror and the Observer. He did NOT have any physical contact with family members. The police did NOT talk to the Cummings family about the Covid lockdown guidelines. Cummings did NOT carry on doing things that everyone else had stopped doing — he even missed the funeral of his uncle who died from Covid. He did NOT leave his London home for leisure reasons — he left it because he was receiving death threats as a result of media demonisation. He was very ill, his wife was ill, and at one point his child was taken to hospital in an ambulance in Durham.

Rod Liddle

Why couldn’t someone ask Dominic Cummings a decent question?

Is it entirely beyond the wit of our gilded political correspondents to ask a different question to the one asked by the previous interlocutor? One after the other they lined up to ask Dominic Cummings the same question, over and over again. Does Peston think he’s asking it better than Kuenssberg? Does Beth Rigby think that asking it for a fourth time will be more elucidatory because she asked it with open contempt in her voice? And how magnificently puffed up they all were. When they were en route to the press conference did they all think the same thing: that they had the killer question and nobody else would have thought of it? Dimbojournalism.

Dominic Cummings

Dominic Cummings: Why I travelled to Durham

This is a transcript of Dominic Cummings' statement: Around midnight on Thursday, the twenty sixth of March, I spoke to the prime minister. He told me that he tested positive for Covid. We discussed the national emergency arrangements for No.10, given his isolation and what I would do in No. 10 the next day. The next morning, I went to work as usual. I was in a succession of meetings about this emergency. I suddenly got a call from my wife who was at home looking after our four year old child. She told me she suddenly felt badly ill. She'd vomited and felt like she might pass out. And there'll be nobody to look after our child. None of our usual childcare options were available. They were alone in the house. After very briefly telling some officials in No.

Patrick O’Flynn

Boris Johnson is no coward for backing Dominic Cummings

The failure of Boris Johnson to sack Dominic Cummings exposes him as a coward, according to the Daily Mirror today, The paper says the Prime Minister was 'scared to act' against his chief adviser as it continues to go for his jugular. Its visually quite powerful front page also damns him as a cheat – or perhaps it means Cummings is a cheat for allegedly breaching the lockdown rules. Anyhow, let us park the 'cheating' accusation, whoever it is aimed at, and focus our attention on cowardice. It’s a very curious charge to level at Johnson and almost the opposite of the truth. Inspecting Johnson’s political CV, one could certainly mount a case for him to be considered reckless but signs of timorousness are very thin on the ground.

Nick Cohen

Boris Johnson will regret standing by Dominic Cummings

Boris Johnson is a populist who no longer understands the populace. Dominic Cummings pretends to be an anti-elitist but cannot see how lethal the slogan ‘one rule for me and another for everyone else’ is to him and the elite he serves. Their government and the Vote Leave movement it grew from once had a crass genius for simple slogans that cut through – £350 million for the NHS, Get Brexit Done, Stay at Home. Boris Johnson’s slogan was Cummings ‘acted responsibly, legally and with integrity’ when he packed up his family, drove 250 miles, stayed near parents and siblings and, according to a witness, went off on family walks.  The message has certainly ‘cut through’ but not in the way Johnson intended.

Stephen Daisley

Jackson Carlaw angers Scottish Tories over Cummings row

Boris Johnson is not the only one catching flack from his parliamentary party over Dominic Cummings. Scottish Conservative MSPs are ‘in despair’ at Jackson Carlaw’s leadership on the row and believe he is currying favour with Downing Street in hopes of securing a peerage down the line.  On Sunday, the Scottish Tory press office released a statement from Ruth Davidson’s successor which read in part:  ‘I've heard what the Prime Minister has said and it is a situation for him to judge. He has reached a conclusion and we must all now focus on continuing to beat this dreadful pandemic. I want the Prime Minister to be able to continue his excellent work leading the country out of lockdown and I am glad he set out his plans clearly today.

James Ball

Britain’s contact tracing conundrum

If there is hope, it lies in contact tracing. The countries that have successfully managed Covid-19 outbreaks and reopened without second peaks (at least so far) have done so through extensive track and trace infrastructure to prevent recurring outbreaks, sometimes after instituting general lockdown. The UK plan is no different: for weeks, ministers have been talking up efforts to build a UK infrastructure to handle the difficult task of rapidly testing every suspected case of Covid-19, and then quickly contacting everyone they may have recently come into contact with, and testing them too.

Patrick O’Flynn

It’s time for Lib Dems to accept that the party’s over

Who are you backing in the latest Liberal Democrat leadership contest then – Layla 'you got me on my knees' Moran or steady Sir Eddie Davey? It’s an academic question really, as I highly doubt it will have punctured your carapace of indifference. The stewardship of what we once referred to as 'the third party' – in government as recently as five years ago – is now very much a minority interest. But thanks to pressure from grassroots Lib Dem members – and allegedly there are still more than 100,000 of those – the party’s leadership contest is back on for this summer.

Steven Fielding

Coronavirus and the enduring myth of Britain’s ‘Dunkirk spirit’

World War Two remains, for a certain kind of Brit, a living and vital presence. The increasingly-distant memory of our Finest Hour still shapes how many regard Britain’s present and future. How else can we even begin to explain Nigel Farage’s appearance to the sound of air raid sirens at one of his Brexit party rallies? Why else should our current Prime Minister have felt obliged to write a biography of Winston Churchill? It was then no real surprise that during the early weeks of the Covid crisis many hoped for a renewed, if somewhat bogus, ‘spirit of the Blitz’. Then, with the 75th anniversary of VE Day looming, in her address to the nation the Queen drew numerous parallels between the war against Hitler and the one against the deadly virus.