Politics

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

Thursday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

It’s not only Cummings whose fate is at stake

When the cabinet met by conference call on Monday, three ministers spoke in support of Dominic Cummings: Jacob Rees-Mogg, Suella Braverman and Priti Patel. Their sentiments were not universally shared. ‘Several of us started feeling ill when Jacob opened his mouth,’ says one attendee. ‘Silence from the parliamentary party is damning.’ But many critics of Cummings now think that, having dug in so deeply, the Prime Minster has to keep his man. To need to fight this much for an aide is bad enough. But to fight and lose would be devastating. This explains the energy behind the pursuit of Cummings in the past few days. The disclosure that Boris

Wednesday

John Connolly John Connolly

What did Boris’s evidence to MPs reveal?

17 min listen

The Prime Minister appeared for the first time in his premiership in front of the Liaison Committee today. The group, formed of select committee chairs, grilled him on a range of issues from Dominic Cummings to pandemic support, and more.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Could Boris’s evidence to MPs signal a coming U-turn?

This morning, some allies of Boris Johnson were very worried about the Dominic Cummings section of the PM’s appearance before the liaison committee. They were concerned it’d produce some news line that would keep this story, which has been so damaging for the government, in lights for another day. But in the end, that section was not actually that bad for Boris Johnson.  Several of the select committee chairs chose to deliver speeches rather than asking sharp questions. The one exception to this was Meg Hillier who pressed Boris Johnson on whether he had seen the evidence Dominic Cummings referred to at his press conference on Monday. Johnson said he

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris Johnson’s women problem

Today, Boris Johnson was grilled by MPs on the Liaison committee, which is made up of select committee chairs. The Prime Minister was asked about a range of topics in the marathon session, including about his adviser Dominic Cummings’s trip to Durham during lockdown. But while the Prime Minister seemed to survive arguably the trickiest part of the session involving Cummings – after MPs mainly used the opportunity to grandstand, rather than ask probing questions – Boris seemed to struggle when asked about female participation in his top team. Former Home Office minister Caroline Nokes began by asking the Prime Minister about his comment that ‘enough’ women were involved in

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Is this the week the magic died for Boris Johnson?

What is really going on here? The via dolorosa Boris Johnson is trudging along is about more than Dominic Cummings’s actions and the Prime Minister’s refusal to acknowledge they were wrong, let alone ask the bloke for his ticket. The government’s Covid-19 messaging has been eviscerated, health guidance undermined, public goodwill forfeited and political capital amassed across ten months expended in a few days. The Prime Minister believes all this is worth it. The 40 Conservative MPs who have called for Cummings to go do not understand why, nor does Scotland Office minister Douglas Ross, who resigned over the matter yesterday. Other Tory politicians privately despair at the high decadence

Steerpike Steerpike

Emily Maitlis’s Cummings grandstanding sparks complaints

Emily Maitlis opened Newsnight last night with a monologue in which she declared that Dominic Cummings broke the rules and the country shocked that the government cannot see this: ‘Good evening, Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The country can see that and it’s shocked the Government cannot. The longer minister and the Prime Minister tell us he worked within them, the more angry the response to this scandal is likely to be.  He was the man remember who always got the public mood –  who tagged the lazy label of elite on those who disagreed. He should understand that public mood now – one of fury contempt and anguish. He made those who struggled

Anthony Browne

The challenge we face coming out of lockdown

The public reaction to the Dominic Cummings saga shows how difficult many people have found the lockdown. It has disrupted the lives of everyone in the country and the education of all schoolchildren, caused an unprecedented recession, soaring unemployment, kept families and lovers apart and led to worrying mental health problems. Tens of thousands have died. Many people were not able to say good-bye to or go to funerals of loved ones. So it is perhaps rather surprising that a poll for the Daily Mail a week ago found that actually many people seem to be liking it. Asked if they were enjoying being at home more, 43 per cent said

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Why Boris Johnson needs Dominic Cummings

Danny Kruger, the Tory MP who is an old friend of Dominic Cummings and his spouse, got it right last night. The ‘affaire Cummings’ – as the French would put it – is no longer about the most powerful aide to the prime minister and the minutiae of how he interpreted coronavirus quarantine rules differently from most of the country. Kruger argued that attacks on Cummings are attacks on Boris Johnson, because the PM has so conspicuously become Cummings’s human shield. So as another Tory MP told me – a grandee no less – this is now all about the PM himself and how he governs. It is about why

John Lee 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

Tuesday

Rod Liddle 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

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

Steerpike 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

Robert Peston 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

John Connolly 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.’ Ross added that he could not tell constituents who had lost family members and were unable to visit their

Steerpike 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.  Inge was invited on to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to discuss his criticisms. But it seems that all did not go to plan after interviewer Justin Webb asked whether it really was appropriate for bishops to be

Monday

Cindy Yu 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 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? There were parents with dependent children who could

Katy Balls 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. Instead, he said that while he understood why people were questioning his decision to travel 260 miles to Durham after believing he could soon fall ill with coronavirus, he thought he had made the right decision given the circumstances: I think reasonable people may well disagree about how