Driving blind: Cummings comes full circle
The architect of Brexit has become an unelected
bureaucrat who refuses to give up control.
By OTTO
ENGLISH 5/25/20, 8:06 PM CET Updated 5/25/20, 10:34 PM CET
LONDON — It
was an unprecedented press conference in every way, not least because the
government’s own code of conduct for special advisers states that they “must
not take part in public political controversy, through any form of statement.”
But it was
long ago obvious, that the ordinary rules do not apply where Dominic Cummings
is concerned.
As 4 p.m.
came and went, it became increasingly clear that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s
chief adviser has as much respect for time as he has for the lockdown rules.
More than
30 minutes passed before Britain’s best known SpAd — short for special adviser
— deigned to gift the waiting world with an explanation of why he seems to have
violated the government’s strict lockdown rules by driving more than 400
kilometers to his parents’ farm in Durham, after his wife said she felt ill
with COVID-19 symptoms.
When
Cummings finally did stroll out into the Downing Street rose garden in his
trademark untucked shirt, it quickly became clear that the strategy — hammered
out behind closed doors over the last 24 hours — was for him to appear, if not
contrite then at least eminently reasonable. And if that failed, he would drone
everyone into submission.
“None of
our usual childcare options were available,” so the Cummings had headed north.
Over the
next 20 minutes, the prime minister’s most trusted adviser — and the man widely credited with bringing
Britain Brexit — delivered a detailed justification for his movements.
In April,
his wife had rung him to say she was feeling ill and he had decided that they would
therefore drive to a safe space, where help would be available if needed.
Everyone
else in the country might have got the message about staying at home and saving
lives but uniquely: “None of our usual child care options were available,” so
the Cummings had headed north.
In his
version of events, Cummings was both victim and hero of the piece — a family
man who had acted reasonably and who had subsequently been unfairly set upon by
the press for doing the right thing.
This was an
“exceptional situation” and “numerous false stories in the media” had sought to
discredit him and make him look as if he had done something wrong. Cummings
claimed he had a “full tank of petrol” and knew that he could safely drive to
Durham and would be able to self-isolate in an empty estate cottage.
Having
reached his parents’ farm, he and his wife had both displayed COVID-19 symptoms
and self-isolated with their 4-year-old son. But then after a 14-day period,
having recovered sufficiently, decided that it might be time to go back to
work.
Cummings
had suffered eyesight problems during the illness and his partner was worried
so they “agreed to go for a short drive to see if I could drive safely.”
That last
admission already seems likely to be a phrase that will launch a 1,000 memes.
It was
during that brief car journey to Barnard Castle and during some subsequent
toilet breaks and exercise that he was spotted by members of the public, who
were wished a hearty “Happy Easter” by Mrs. Cummings as they stared on from a
distance.
It was all
very reasonable, he said, and “I don’t regret what I did.”
In ensuing
question and answers with the journalists present, he doubled down. He hadn’t
bothered the prime minister with the details of his journey because Johnson
“had a million things on his plate” and was ill in bed.
Cummings
blamed the media, the public, the wilful misinterpretation of his words — but
he refused to accept that he himself had acted wrongly.
Whatever he might say, however much he might refute it
— Cummings did break the rules. While millions of other Britons forewent
freedom of movement, while hundreds of thousands struggled with child care and
the effects of the virus, Johnson’s top adviser decided that he was above the
fray.
What was on show in Cummings’ performance was the
underlying superciliousness of the new elite running Britain — and most of all
that of the Svengali who sits behind its throne whispering instructions.
How dare
mere hacks and police constables question the judgment of the man who gave the
world Brexit. It all made perfect sense to him so why couldn’t they grasp it?
Cummings
has always been a whole set of paradoxes. For 20 years he carved a niche for
himself in the shadows, cementing the agenda of Euroskeptic conservatism and
serving the biggest elite in the land, while claiming all the while that he was
some kind of anti-establishment outlier.
The growing antipathy of millions of Britons for an
administration that thinks it’s “one rule for them and another for us” might
yet frame the government’s future.
He isn’t.
He sits at the heart of an overconfident inherently arrogant establishment that
thinks it can ride this one out.
Cummings
has a lot of enemies both within and without the inner corridors of power, and
this performance won’t have won him many fans. Genuine contrition was thin on
the ground and he seemed more preoccupied that “media reports” about him were
false than anything else.
Perhaps he
and Johnson have calculated it correctly. Perhaps he will weather this storm
and cling on to power.
But if that
happens, the damage it has wrought will linger. The growing antipathy of
millions of Britons for an administration that thinks it’s “one rule for them
and another for us” might yet frame the government’s future.
Whatever
eventually happens, Cummings can add another paradox to his curriculum vitae.
The
architect of Britain’s effort to “take back control” from the unelected and
unaccountable bureaucrats is now an unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat
refusing to cede control.
The Cummings debacle has exposed Boris Johnson's
weakness and dependency
Polly
Toynbee
The prime minister is entirely unfit for the
responsibility of his office. In cleaving to his special adviser, he looks the
servant not the master
Tue 26 May
2020 07.00 BSTLast modified on Tue 26 May 2020 07.41 BST
Out of the
dark side emerged the power behind the throne. Can the supreme disrupter do
humility? Can he grovel an apology in front of those he most despises?
No regrets,
not sorry, but he tried a kind of plea for pity. The Cummings family plainly
had a bad time, but his words may fall on stony hearts among other families who
had also the virus, but obeyed the stay-at-home order without travelling 260
miles. The vast majority didn’t seek out loopholes, but kept the “stay at home”
rule in word and spirit. Did the Cummings have no friend in London? Who would
take a 30-mile drive to a beauty spot, risking wife and child, as an eye test?
Everyone
wants to interpret the orders their own way but, as someone who sits on the
science advisory group (Sage) and as No 10 director of strategy, he makes the
rules. Never were these so crystal clear as when lockdown slammed the shutters.
Behind
front doors people suffered in solitary confinement. The single mother with the
disabled child, the cancer patient barred from their children, aged
grandparents in care homes who never saw families again. Most heartrending was
the 13-year-old boy dying all alone because his parents obeyed the rules to
stay away.
Everywhere
lonely deaths and lonely funerals are seared deep in everyone’s thoughts,
alongside tales of heroic health and care staff sacrificing their lives, and
local groups helping others. Everyone is touched by this national calamity,
which will yet leave more pain in its economic wake with so many jobless, with
careers blighted, hopes dashed.
Just as
well this Thursday will be last the clap-for-carers as the public mood risks
turning angry: clap the heroes but beat your saucepans at scoundrels who tell
us to do what they say, not what they do. The prime minister’s defence of
Dominic Cummings’ rule-flouting is no Westminster bubble brouhaha, but it
drives right to the heart of voters’ lived experience. Typhoid Dom and Mary
escaped London at peak infection, within talking distance of parents while
others pined for family.
By clinging
on, both Cummings and his leader expose an alienation from public sentiment,
after nine weary weeks of isolation with so much grief and ruin. But they have
opted to take on a flock of bishops, police, medics, scientists and a flotilla
of Tory MPs whose inboxes overflow with public indignation. Any minister would
have been rapidly expelled. This is no mere storm in a Westminster bubble:
illegally shutting down parliament and lying to the Queen did Boris Johnson no
harm in the election because few voters felt personally prorogued. But this is
personal.
For as long
as Cummings stays, Johnson is damaged, burning through political credit when he
has very little to spare, sliding in polls that show 52% of voters calling for
Cummings to go, only 28% to stay. We know Johnson to be a man without loyalty –
not to friend, lover or family, faithful only to himself. So why is Cummings
indispensable?
This exposes the weakness and dependency of a prime
minister who is only an empty frontman, entirely unfit and unwilling to
shoulder the job’s heavy lifting, relying dangerously on a svengali who has
persuaded him of his genius. But as long as Johnson cleaves to him, he looks
the servant not the master.
Look what
else looms as a flurry of devastating analyses of Johnson’s mishandling of the
epidemic emerges, even from his Tory press. As infections doubled every three
days there were “38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster”, the Sunday
Times found, excoriating a lockdown delay that “cost thousands of lives”.
Blithely Johnson ordered “business a usual”, boasting in true Trumpian style on
2 March that Britain was “very, very well prepared”, with “fantastic testing
systems” and “amazing surveillance of the spread of the disease”. Radio 4’s
More or Less has just demolished the daily lies on testing. It has never been
anywhere near 100,000 people a day – in fact, barely half that, once duplicate
tests and non-tests are deducted.
Cummings
doesn’t matter. What really matters is the damage done to trust in future
official coronavirus messages. This week Johnson will relax the rules further,
partly bowing to pressure from the impatient right wing of his party.
Persuading people to stick to more complicated rules will be hard while
gradually easing out of lockdown.
I talked to
an experienced contact tracer, now working on the Covid-19 track-and-trace
scheme: she describes the chaos of its overcentralised non-functioning
computerised system which will certainly not be up and running by next Monday,
let alone fulfil Johnson’s fatuous promise of a “world-beating” system.
But here’s
what worries her most. She will be cold-calling people with no symptoms to
order them to strictly home-isolate for 14 days, just as everyone else is
easing up. If Cummings couldn’t obey this, even with florid infection in his
family, how much harder will it be to convince others not infected?
“We know
there are mountain ranges of surges ahead of us each time there’s an easing of
rules. We expect rises at the end of June, and the end of July, and just hope
there’s no second wave in the autumn or winter,” she says. Freedom from
lockdown means chasing down every new Covid-19 case, commanding rigid obedience
from all they’ve contacted, even those who can barely remember meeting the
infected person. By defending Cummings, Johnson has demolished a sense of moral
obligation, undermining the public spirit that says “I will if you will”. He
has allowed us all to follow our “instinct”, not the contact tracers’
instructions.
In a cry of
despair, Prof Stephen Reicher, of the Sage behavioural insights subcommittee,
says: “Boris Johnson has trashed all the advice we have given on how to build
trust and secure adherence to the measures necessary to control Covid-19.”
A
government with a majority of 80 is rock solid. But a Tory prime minister is
never safe. Leaders in this ruthless party last only so long as they remain
winners. After the outrage over her poll tax, even Margaret Thatcher fell under
their undying lust for power. It’s an impulse that keeps Conservatives in
office most of the time – and one which Labour often lacks.
The tens of
thousands of lives needlessly lost during Johnson’s cavalier handling of the
epidemic will weigh heavily on his premiership from now on. Indulging one of
his own to disobey rules that everyone else followed may linger long in public
memories too. They will hope this blows away, but I suspect it will leave
behind political scars – yet another signal that we are never “all in this
together”.
• Polly
Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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