Tory poll lead collapses as voters say Cummings
should go
More than two-thirds of voters want Dominic Cummings
sacked and Tory lead over Labour plummets
Toby Helm
political editor
Sat 30 May
2020 20.30 BSTLast modified on Sat 30 May 2020 21.45 BST
Boris
Johnson is under fresh pressure to sack Dominic Cummings as a new poll shows
that more than two-thirds of voters – including more than half of Tories – want
him thrown out of Downing Street for breaching lockdown rules.
The survey
by Opinium for the Observer shows a massive 81% think Cummings broke the rules.
It also finds that support for the Conservatives is collapsing, with the party
now just four points ahead of Labour, having had a commanding lead of 26 points
just two months ago.
In the past
week alone, the Tory lead has fallen by eight points, the largest weekly drop
Opinium has recorded since 2017.
After
several days in which the news has been dominated by the row over Cummings’
trip from London to Durham with his wife and child, and his refusal to
apologise, public anger is laid bare by the poll. Some 68% think Cummings
should resign. If he does not, 66% believe he should be sacked by Johnson.
As he stood
by his adviser, Johnson said he would ultimately leave the public to make up
their minds. The poll, and a petition calling for Cummings to be dismissed that
has attracted over a million signatures, show where the balance of opinion
lies.
Johnson
also tried to blame the media for the story. But the poll finds that only 29%
of people believe journalists have been unfair to Cummings.
By
contrast, 67% do not believe Cummings’ explanation of what happened, spelt out
in his unapologetic appearance in the Downing Street rose garden last week.
People are particularly sceptical about the reasons he gave for a trip to
Barnard Castle on 12 April after recovering from illness, with 72% saying they
do not believe that he wanted a trial drive to see if his eyesight was good
enough for the 250-mile trip back to London.
Just over
half (52%) think Cummings’ actions will have damaged the fight against
coronavirus, as the government tries to launch the track and trace system.
Opinium
conducted its survey on Thursday and Friday after Johnson said he believed it
was time for the country to “move on” from the the controversy: 41% agreed that
the country should now “move on”, but a large minority (37%) said it should not
– including almost a fifth (18%) of 2019 Conservative voters. Two-thirds (65%)
said they believed Johnson was wrong to be still supporting Cummings –
including almost half (48%) of 2019 Conservative voters. Just over two in five
(43%) UK adults said they had lost respect for the government over its backing
of Cummings – of which 45% voted Conservative in 2019.
The Tory
lead of 4 points is the lowest since Johnson became prime minister. The Tories
are down four points on last week, to 43% (two points below their figure at the
general election). Labour is up 4 points, to 39%.
From rose garden to ridicule: how a week of
disaster for Tories and Dominic Cummings unfolded
Boris Johnson said it was time to move on – but the
public, the press and scores of his own MPs didn’t agree
Toby Helm
and Robin McKie
Published
onSat 30 May 2020 21.25 BST
As she
looked out of her kitchen window towards a farm in the distance owned by
Dominic Cummings’ parents, an elderly woman described her reaction on Friday to
the story that had caused shock not just in rural County Durham, but across the
whole country.
“I have
isolated for 10 weeks. I have not seen my children since before Christmas,”
said the woman, who asked not to be named. She lives in a pretty village across
the valley, with a pond and village green, where life normally passes quietly
by with few disturbances.
Over the
past week, however, the peace has been broken and feelings have run high. “If
there were stocks in the village, Dominic Cummings would be in them,” she said.
“There is
not one single person around here who is not disgusted. Everyone is furious
because we have all played fair. People haven’t been able to go to funerals,
they haven’t been able to go to weddings, they haven’t been able to look after
people who are dying.
If there were stocks in the village, Cummings would be
in them. There is not one single person around here who is not disgusted
A Co Durham local
“I can’t go
to see my friend in Barnard Castle who is dying and yet that four-letter word
goes out for a trip.
“I was born
in this county. I have never come across ill-feeling like this about anything.
Everyone feels it is one law for us and one law for them. That is so unfair.”
It is now
eight days since the Guardian and Daily Mirror broke the story of Dominic
Cummings’ 264-mile journey with his wife and child from London to his parents’
home at the height of the lockdown, and much as Downing Street would love it
to, the story is not going away.
Last Sunday
– as the controversy began to dominate the news – the prime minister insisted
that his most trusted and powerful adviser had done nothing wrong, either by
travelling north or, when he was there, by taking a 60-mile round trip in the
family car to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight on his wife’s birthday.
Boris Johnson’s defence of Cummings – when the
evidence against him seems so clear to everyone – has angered and appalled not
only the public at large, but also Tory MPs and the Tory press in equal
measure.
The
normally loyal Daily Mail reacted on Monday with an outraged front page
headline next to photos of Cummings and Johnson, asking What Planet Are They
On?
That same
afternoon Cummings attempted an explanation in front of the cameras, portraying
himself as a normal responsible dad who had left London because he was worried
about his son.
During an
extraordinary appearance in the Downing Street rose garden – normally reserved
for the most important visitors – the man Johnson dare not sack was, however,
completely unrepentant. He would not resign, he said, and had not at any point
thought of doing so.
In
response, MPs of all parties reported that anger from voters had been turned up
to boiling point. And more media scorn poured down on the PM and his adviser.
Proving that the story had dangerous levels of cut-though, even for a governing
party with a large majority, the Daily Star broke its rule of ignoring politics
on its front page by printing a cut-out mask of Cummings’ face with the words:
Do whatever the hell you want and sod everybody else mask.
As the
prime minister tries this weekend to get the country to “move on” from the
Cummings row – and focus on his new track-and-trace plan to defeat coronavirus,
while easing the lockdown slowly at the same time – that Daily Star front page
precisely encapsulates his problem.
As one
despairing Tory MP put it: “We can say move on and we can say let’s tackle
Covid-19 together. But by staking everything on saving Dominic Cummings, we
have lost the trust we desperately need to do exactly that. How can we ask
people to obey lockdown rules when those at the top are seen to be doing as
they want and are not obeying rules? The awful thing is that I think the damage
is done.”
All last
week the inboxes of Tory MPs were full to overflowing with emails from incredulous
voters who could see the glaring contradiction in Johnson’s and his
government’s position.
In the same
press conferences, the health Secretary Matt Hancock was earnestly telling
people it was their “civic duty” to self-isolate under the newly launched
track-and-trace system if they had been near someone infected with Covid-19,
while in the next breath defending Cummings for having done nothing wrong. “It
is a complete disaster. It is not just about rule-breaking, it is the glaring
contradictions that make nonsense of messages because Cummings is still in
there,” said another senior Tory.
More than 100 Conservative members of parliament,
afraid that they will never be forgiven by their electorates unless they
condemn Cummings publicly, have now chosen to criticise him, risking the prime
minister’s wrath.
The
pressure on the prime minister will only mount further. Sir Graham Brady,
chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, has already relayed the extent of
anger on the Conservative benches to Downing Street. But this week, the 1922
will meet after MPs return to parliament, and the issue is expected to dominate
everything.
Some
Conservatives are doing their best to cool the controversy. Charles Walker,
vice-chair of the 1922 Committee, accepts that many are furious, but says there
will be more important issues over which the government will have confront the
people in months and years to come. “If people are very angry at the actions of
Dominic Cummings, then that anger is probably only a harbinger of the greater
rage to come when the forthcoming recession, or heaven forbid depression,
starts to bite,” Walker says. “Then the actions of a worried father will be
secondary to the reality of lost businesses, jobs and homes.”
Other
Conservatives vainly try to claim the fuss is being whipped up by bitter and
twisted leftwing and liberal Remainers who want revenge on Cummings for
delivering Brexit for Johnson.
But saying
that it is all politically motivated does not fit with the evidence, and most
Tories know that. Our Opinium poll today shows that 81% of all voters think
Cummings broke the rules, and that 52% of Tory supporters think he should
resign. Almost half of 2019 Tory voters say their respect for the government
they voted in has been reduced by the Cummings fiasco.
Writing in
today’s Observer the Tory hardline Brexiter Peter Bone calls again for Cummings
to go and dismisses the idea that it is Remainers stirring trouble. “The saga
is now preventing the government from being able to get their message out
clearly,” he writes. “Every announcement on changes to the lockdown rules,
track and trace, and government support, is bogged down with questions about Mr
Cummings.”
Bone adds: “I believe that Mr Cummings did break the
rules. Now, if he had accepted that he had done something wrong, and apologised
for it, as a fair-minded person, I would have thought that that would be the
end of it. It is the insistence that he did not break the rules and the refusal
to apologise that has outraged so many.”
On
Thursday, as Johnson tried desperately to take stories about Dominic Cummings
off the front pages and news bulletins, he announced his plans to ease the
lockdown by allowing up to six people to meet outside or in each others’
gardens. They could enjoy barbecues together in the hot weather, he said. The announcement
surprised many at high levels of government as they had not expected the
loosening to be confirmed so soon. Some suspected it had been brought forward
to distract from the Cummings row.
Now Johnson
is facing new criticism for easing the lockdown too soon and risking a second
wave of infections. As The Observer reports today, a group of 27 leading public
health experts is warning that his refusal to sack Cummings, and his reliance
on systems for track and trace that may not be ready, is a dangerous
combination that has seriously undermined trust in government.
This incident will make this challenge even harder for
the government to clearly communicate and explain lockdown rules
Shona Hilton, University of Glasgow
Other
scientists add that the Cummings affair has blown a hole in the government’s
messaging. Shona Hilton, professor of public health policy at the University of
Glasgow, said: “In the weeks and months ahead, communicating the easing of
lockdown restrictions is going to be a significant challenge requiring public
trust in our leaders. This incident will make this challenge even harder for
the government to clearly communicate and explain these rules. Politicians
should not underestimate this challenge or take public support for granted.”
Stephen
Griffin, a virologist and associate professor at Leeds University, agreed:
“There has only been a very gradual decline in numbers of new cases of Covid-19
being reported each day. We are still getting them in their thousands and it is
going to be very hard to test and trace new cases in those sorts of numbers.
The margin for error is going to be very slight. And then Cummings does this.
It was shocking. The message that we should just move on is not correct. We
need to be led by example and not by allowing exceptions like this.”
Meanwhile,
the Tories are falling fast in the polls. Their lead stood at 26 points over
Labour at the end of March but is now down to four points. On Friday, a
petition calling for Cummings to be sacked had gained over one million
signatures. Our poll today shows 68% of people think he should resign and if he
doesn’t 66% want Johnson to sack him. On Monday, Johnson said he had made clear
his position on his adviser and that it was now up to the public to decide its
view. It seems the public has now done so but, as yet, there is no sign the
prime minister is listening.
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