Tory unrest increases pressure on PM to sack
Dominic Cummings
Extraordinary party revolt and public criticisms
reflect anger over aide’s lockdown breaches
Heather
Stewart, Rowena Mason and Kate Proctor
Tue 26 May
2020 20.34 BSTLast modified on Tue 26 May 2020 20.45 BST
Boris
Johnson faced an extraordinary and growing revolt from within his own party on
Tuesday over his refusal to sack his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, for
breaching lockdown rules.
On a day of
dramatic developments, a junior minister resigned and more than 30 other
Conservative MPs called for Cummings to go, many citing inboxes overflowing
with hundreds of angry messages from constituents.
A further
eight Tory MPs were publicly critical of the senior aide’s actions, and three
said privately that he should be forced out.
Downing
Street had hoped Monday’s lengthy statement from Cummings in the rose garden of
No 10 would convince the public he had acted as any concerned father would in
driving 260 miles to his parents’ property in Durham when his wife was
experiencing potential coronavirus symptoms.
But in a
snap YouGov poll, 71% of respondents said they thought Cummings had broken the
rules, and 59% that he should resign – up seven percentage points from three
days earlier. Forty-six per cent of Tory voters and 52% of leave voters said he
should quit.
As the
number of excess deaths registered in the UK during the Covid-19 outbreak
reached nearly 60,000, and an international comparison confirmed the country
has one of the world’s highest rates of coronavirus deaths per capita, the
Downing Street press briefing was dominated by questions about Cummings for a
fourth consecutive day.
It follows
an investigation by the Guardian and Daily Mirror revealing Cummings’
previously secret trips to and around north-east England in late March and
early April.
Douglas
Ross, the MP for Moray who stepped down as a Scotland Office minister, said
that although he accepted Cummings had acted with his family’s best interests
at heart, “Mr Cummings’ interpretation of the government advice was not shared
by the vast majority of people who have done as the government asked”.
He added:
“I have constituents who didn’t get to say goodbye to loved ones; families who
could not mourn together; people who didn’t visit sick relatives because they followed
the guidance of the government. I cannot in good faith tell them they were all
wrong and one senior adviser to the government was right.”
Cummings
insisted a caveat about parents looking after young children legitimised his
decision to drive to Durham, saying: “The guidance says you don’t have to just
sit there.”
The prime
minister has staunchly defended his most senior aide, whose advice was critical
in sweeping the Conservatives to an 80-seat majority, with the “Get Brexit
done” slogan, at December’s general election.
Significant
revolts are rare at such an early stage after a thumping election victory, but
Cummings was already a divisive figure and his refusal to apologise for an
apparent breach of the rules appears to have touched a nerve with the
lockdown-weary public.
Calls for
him to go came from across the spectrum of the Conservative party on Tuesday.
They
included the former chief whip Mark Harper, who said there was “no credible
justification” for the drive to local beauty spot Barnard Castle, apparently to
test whether Cummings’ eyesight was good enough to make the drive back to the
capital.
The former
health secretary Jeremy Hunt released the text of a reply to a constituent, in
which he said of Cummings: “What he did was a clear breach of the lockdown
rules” – though Hunt did not call for him to resign, saying: “You do make
mistakes in these situations.”
Four more
former ministers – Steve Baker, Harriett Baldwin, Stephen Hammond and Jackie
Doyle-Price – all called for Cummings to go.
The veteran
Brexiter Peter Bone said he had not been reassured by Monday’s statement. “The
rose garden interview just confirmed to me that he had driven up to Durham when
we were in a strict lockdown. He absolutely should resign,” he said.
“I have 400
emails from people and I’m sitting here with my colleague going through every
one, and we’d rather be doing some case work but we just have so many people to
reply to.”
Johnson
loyalists continued to defend the embattled adviser on Tuesday, however.
Cummings’ longtime political friend and former boss Michael Gove gave a series
of supportive interviews, insisting the Barnard Castle side trip was wise.
“I think he
was wise to make sure he was comfortable before driving back down to London on
the A1, an inevitably busier road,” he told Sky News.
Gove also
said: “It is the case it was part of the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s
guidance that you could drive at that time to take exercise as well.” However,
the rules on exercise were only relaxed after Cummings was back in London.
Later, the
health secretary, Matt Hancock, who is the minister responsible for the
lockdown regulations, repeated his own defence of Cummings, insisting: “My view
is that what he did was within the guidelines.”
Asked why
he himself had stayed put when he and his wife were ill with the virus, Hancock
told the Downing Street press briefing bluntly: “We had childcare readily
available at home, and Mr Cummings didn’t.”
But Hancock
was blindsided by a question from a vicar in Brighton about whether members of the
public who had been fined for travelling during the lockdown could have them
reviewed if they were travelling for childcare reasons.
“It’s a
very good question and we do understand the impact and the need for making sure
that children get adequate childcare, that is one of the significant concerns
that we have had all the way through this,” he said.
He then
said he would speak to colleagues at the Treasury about the issue. Government
sources later insisted he had not intended to promise a review, and it would be
looked into by the Home Office.
Downing
Street has not yet announced a replacement for Ross – and could struggle to
find another supportive Scottish Tory MP. The party’s leader in Scotland,
Jackson Carlaw, who is an MSP, told the BBC on Tuesday that the Cummings
“furore” was a distraction, and if he were Cummings, he would “be considering
my position”.
During his
briefing on Monday, Cummings insisted he had not considered resigning and did
not regret his various journeys – though he did concede that perhaps he should
have discussed his whereabouts with the prime minister at an earlier stage.
Johnson found out a few days later, but nothing was made public.
Labour
sought to pile the pressure on Johnson, with the shadow chancellor, Anneliese
Dodds, writing to her Conservative opposite number, Rishi Sunak, to ask if the
government has modelled the risks of declining compliance with the lockdown
rules.
Without
mentioning Cummings by name, she said she was “deeply concerned that the last
48 hours have presented a confused picture” about whether those experiencing
symptoms should self-isolate.
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