In one of the more surreal moments of Dominic Cummings’s testimony to MPs yesterday, the former No. 10 advisor suggested that Carrie Symonds and Dilyn the dog might be to blame for the UK’s sluggish coronavirus response.
Cummings told MPs that on a key day in mid-March, as the government began to consider locking down, No. 10 were first of all derailed by a Donald Trump plan to carpet-bomb the Middle East, and were then sent into a tailspin by a story in the Times about Dilyn the dog – Boris and Carrie’s resident pooch. According to Cummings:
‘It sounds so surreal it couldn’t possibly be true – that day the Times had run a huge story about the Prime Minister and his girlfriend and their dog. And the Prime Minister’s girlfriend was going completely crackers about this story and demanding that the press office deal with that. So we had this completely insane situation in which part of the building was saying “are we going to bomb Iraq?”, part of the building was arguing about whether or not we were going to do quarantine or not do quarantine, [and] the Prime Minister has his girlfriend going crackers about something completely trivial.’
Readers may be wondering what kind of bombshell piece about Dilyn could have potentially rocked the No.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in