The shadow of death still hangs over the country. The losses from the Covid-19 virus continue to mount. The end is not yet in sight. The way we live will be altered by the pandemic and its consequences for years to come. Amid the weight and seriousness of life-changing and life-ending events, how can the national conversation be dominated for three days by the bad behaviour of Dominic Cummings during the lockdown?
The answer is brutal but clear. It is because Cummings has so much power and has done so much to make this country what it is today, first because of Brexit, and now because of the mishandling of the pandemic. The furore over his rule-breaking cannot be dismissed as a bubble issue, especially after Boris Johnson backed him so comprehensively and divisively from the No 10 lectern today. Now, whether Cummings ultimately goes or stays, this is a choice that affects everyone and everything.
The poison in Cummings’s journey to Durham is the taint of hypocrisy it injects into the public bloodstream at precisely the time when public confidence in the handling of the crisis is already beginning to fray. One rule for him, another for us. It’s an absolutely lethal tag for any government project, but it’s doubly, triply so in a pandemic. The arrogance and ineptitude are staggering.
The Johnson government’s initial lockdown message, which Cummings was intimately involved in formulating and promoting, could hardly have been simpler. Stay at home, it said. That simple injunction was reinforced by exceptionally direct messaging and public advertising. Johnson, speaking to the nation on TV, called it an “instruction”. The ubiquitous ads said things like: “If one person breaks the rules, we will all suffer,” and: “Breaking the rules is breaking the law.”
The public got the message. To the evident surprise of some of the government’s advisers, they took it seriously and overwhelmingly obeyed. Every day, ministers and scientists confirmed the public’s discipline about sticking to the rules. The nation’s sacrifices, some of them heartbreaking, were repeatedly extolled. What aspect of that message would Cummings himself not have understood when his wife, Mary Wakefield, told him that she was suffering from Covid-19 symptoms herself?
It is utterly clear what Cummings should have done as he considered his wife’s disturbing news and the implications for himself and their four-year-old son. He should have considered his options. He should then have warned the prime minister and the cabinet secretary about potential problems. He should have consulted with them very specifically about how to act. And he should have taken their advice on whether it was appropriate to travel to self-isolate. As a political animal, and someone who would know that he could be spotted and photographed, he should have been alert. He could have proposed that a proactive press release could have been issued to cover his back.
Whether Cummings consulted anyone in that way is not clear. Nor is their response, if there was one. Perhaps he didn’t bother to ask. Perhaps, with Johnson himself sickening with Covid-19 at the same time, no one was senior enough or brave enough to stand up to Cummings and say: “Stay in London.” If that was the case, it says a lot about the workings of this government, none of it good. We are entitled to know what happened, and who knew, because the public policy implications could be so severe for the rest of us.
The mishandling speaks volumes about Cummings’s judgment and temperament. His lack of humility when the news broke was striking. To say: “Who cares about good looks. It’s a question of doing the right thing. It’s not about what you guys think,” to journalists was characteristic Cummings. As so often, a humble apology might have killed the story. But Cummings does not do humble.
The outcome will be devastating for the government’s attempts to carry people with them. Public opinion has been noticeably steady through the pandemic. Most people have proved cautious, rule-abiding, risk-averse. Even now, pressure to loosen the restrictions only comes from a minority. It was entirely predictable that the public’s judgments about Cummings this weekend would be overwhelmingly negative. So it has proved. YouGov found that across every region of the UK, and among leave voters and remain voters alike, the majorities are all emphatically against him.
What happens to Cummings is important. But the real question posed by the furore goes further. Johnson’s credibility over the handling of the biggest domestic crisis faced by any recent government is in the balance. That credibility is vital in the next phases of the response to the pandemic, which are scheduled to be launched this coming week – a week in which parliament is in recess, a typical Cummings touch. But the implications extend to the Johnson government’s authority in the post-pandemic political world, too.
That credibility was already on the line before a word of the Cummings story broke on Friday. Johnson’s fatefully botched broadcast at the start of May started the recent rot. The pressure to loosen the original restrictions came overwhelmingly from the right of the Tory party and some of the media. Johnson – and Cummings – bent to the pressure. “Stay at home” became “Stay alert” – though only in England – and the handling of the pandemic instantly became much harder. New infections and deaths continued. Johnson’s ratings sagged. Confidence in the government dipped. Backbenchers began to revolt again.
The Cummings scandal has arrived at a vulnerable moment. Faced with the pandemic, the government – and indeed the country – needed a team that could rise to the demands, and grow impressively into their responsibilities. That has not happened. Few ministers have enhanced their reputations. Several have been found wanting. And Johnson’s own performance since coming out of intensive care last month has been intermittent at best. Charges that he is a part-time prime minister could be laughed off when Jeremy Corbyn made them, but are more damaging now. The qualifications for membership of Johnson’s cabinet – unthinking support for Brexit and unquestioning loyalty to Johnson – seem less sufficient than ever. Few have enhanced their reputations during the crisis.
The shallowness of the talent pool goes some way to explain Johnson’s determination, in defiance of so much criticism, to hold on to Cummings. The sight this weekend of elected ministers rushing to the defence of an unelected official was humiliating, not just for them but for British politics. There have often been controversial advisers in modern British politics: Alastair Campbell, Damian McBride, Steve Hilton, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, to name but a few. In the end, though, they all had to go. Cummings’s crisis moment marks an extraordinary inversion.
The sight of Tory MPs beginning to turn against Cummings, and thus to some degree, against Johnson, is a sure sign that a political project is foundering. The ultimate irony is that Cummings, who came to power at the head of a populist, anti-elite uprising over Brexit, has now been shamed by an act of supreme elitism and disdain for ordinary people. When it came to the crunch the great despiser forgot that the moral law applies not just to all the rest of us – but to him as well.
Bad behaviour and rule-breaking have got Johnson a long way in life. This evening’s free pass to Cummings suggests there is to be no going back, no learning from mistakes, no attempt to grow wiser with new responsibilities. It is a reckless endorsement of an overmighty adviser, a snub to elected politicians on both sides of the Commons, a declaration of war against much of the press, a defiance of the institutional balances within Britain’s system of democratic government and a self-centred, self-indulgent signal to the public that the rules no longer really matter.