Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Monday

25 May 2020

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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. The effects of these efforts where they work can be dramatic: South Korea had a recent outbreak

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. A decision to postpone it until after

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

Sunday

24 May 2020

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s political gamble over Cummings

11 min listen

Boris Johnson gave an unambiguous defence of Dominic Cummings at today’s press conference. In so doing, the government is gambling that this is a storm they can weather. On the podcast, Kate Andrews discusses their thinking with Katy Balls and James Forsyth.

Robert Peston

Dominic Cummings has a human shield: Boris Johnson

The rule of modern politics, let’s call it Trump’s first law, is that if you are being attacked for apparently breaking the rules, the best defence is to double down and insist that it is in fact you and your colleagues who have acted with the utmost integrity – and anyone who suggests otherwise is a knave or a fool. Such was how the prime minister defended his chief aide Dominic Cummings – who as I said just now in the daily Downing Street press conference breached not just one but at least three lockdown rules (don’t leave the house if someone in it has Covid-19 symptoms, don’t spend hours

Stephen Daisley

Boris Johnson’s support for Cummings is really a defence of the elite

It’s not often a politician calls a press conference to sneer openly at the voters but Boris Johnson has always done things his own way. The Prime Minister’s performance this afternoon was a careful, considered declaration of contempt at all those chumps stupid enough to obey the rules he laid down for them. They thought those regulations applied to everyone, regardless of position or connections? What rubes. Addressing Dominic Cummings’ freewheeling interpretation of lockdown guidelines, the Prime Minister said: ’I believe that in every respect he has acted responsibly, legally and with integrity, and with the overriding aim to stopping the spread of the virus and saving lives.’ I don’t

Steerpike

Watch: STV’s deleted ‘Thank you, Nicola’ video

It’s become a common sight to see SNP politicians complaining about journalistic bias against them. Just last week the BBC’s Sarah Smith was in the firing line for suggesting Nicola Sturgeon was ‘enjoying the opportunity’ to set lockdown policy in Scotland different to the rest of the United Kingdom. However, Mr S wonders if the latest STV offering may be more to their taste. This afternoon STV released a video of children thanking the First Minister for keeping them safe. In the somewhat bizarre video, various young children are filming taking part in a joint message of thanks set to soft piano music: The children of Scotland would like to say thank you

Steerpike

Civil servants strike back: ‘arrogant and offensive’

Oh dear. For some time there have been reports of tension between Downing Street and the Civil Service. Now it seems that the latest row over Dominic Cummings has brought things to a head. After Boris Johnson used today’s press conference to provide a full throttled defence of his aide amid allegations that he had breached lockdown guidelines, it appears to have all got a bit too much for one civil servant. Minutes after the press conference came to an end, this tweet was emitted from the official UK Civil Service account: It ought to come as no surprise that it has since been deleted…

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s political gamble over Cummings

Despite calls from a growing number of Tory MPs for Dominic Cummings to go over allegations that he breached lockdown guidance, Boris Johnson used today’s press conference to give his senior aide his full backing. In unambiguous terms, the Prime Minister began proceedings by telling the public he had held lengthy discussions with Cummings over the past 48 hours and concluded he had no case to answer to. Of Cummings’s decision to travel 260 miles from London to Durham to self isolate so that he and his family had childcare nearby, Johnson said his adviser had simply ‘followed the instincts of every father and every parent and I do not mark him

Brendan O’Neill

What’s more disturbing: Cummings’ behaviour – or the mob pursuing him?

The Dominic Cummings story is deeply disturbing. No, not the fact that Cummings and his wife, Mary Wakefield, took what they considered to be essential steps to ensure the welfare of their young child, but the fury and the bile that have been heaped upon them for doing so. It really is something. For the entire weekend the media and the Twitterati have been raging against two parents who were ill, or at risk of falling ill, and who did what they thought was best for their kid in this situation: drove from London to Durham so that family members could assist with childcare if necessary. In a more morally

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Shapps says Dominic Cummings won’t resign

Grant Shapps – Dominic Cummings won’t resign A media storm has been battering the government this morning after it emerged that the Prime Minister’s key adviser Dominic Cummings could have breached the government’s strict advice against travel during the lockdown. In March, Cummings and his family left London to self-isolate in his native Durham, in order to be near to close relatives should he and his wife be unable to look after their 4 year old son. Cummings and the government insist that he did nothing wrong. The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps defended Cummings’ decision and denied that his job was on the line: GS: Mr Cummings decided that the

Steven Barrett

Was Dominic Cummings acting legally?

As a lawyer, I am firmly against the politicisation of law. It is important to remember that we who serve justice do so for everyone – not merely for people we like or to advance political causes. ‘Lockdown’ has so far been three different legal regimes, and for ease, I’ll restrict myself here to the first one. Under that, we all had the power in reg. 6(1) to leave the house whenever we had a “reasonable excuse”. What it said was “During the emergency period, no person may leave the place where they are living without reasonable excuse”. What that means is: provided we had a reasonable excuse, we could leave

Robert Peston

Why Dominic Cummings’ departure may only be a ‘matter of time’

Dominic Cummings’s role in government no longer looks sustainable, as members of the cabinet and Tory MPs turn against him – and in the words of one very senior member of the government, it is “only a matter of time” until the prime minister asks him to go. The problem for Cummings – and the prime minister – is summed up in a Tweet by the former minister Caroline Nokes: “My inbox is rammed with very angry constituents and I do not blame them.” Nokes is typical, according to ministers and MPs. Like all prime ministers, Boris Johnson risks deep harm to his own authority and popularity if he ignores

Gus Carter

Revealed: 90,000 ‘void’ UK Covid tests

Every evening, at around 5 o’clock, a minister walks through the large panelled doors to Downing Street’s state dining room and delivers the daily coronavirus briefing. The conference always begins in the same way – ‘I’d like to update you on the latest daily figures’. The minister in question then proceeds to tell us just how many tests have been carried out over the last 24 hours and the number of positive cases discovered. We are left to conclude that the remaining tests must have come back as negative, that no infection was detected. However, there is a third category of result: void tests. These are tests that proved inconclusive, either because the