Cummings Comes Clean?

The Prime Minister's chief advisor, Domenic Cummings, gave an hour-long press conference in the garden of 10 Downing Street yesterday afternoon (25th May). He answered many of the questions that Johnson had failed to answer the day before (see my previous post). Some were convinced by Cummings's defence of his actions, especially the Cabinet Ministers, but many were not, including 40 MPs of the governing Conservative Party. This afternoon a retired police chief was bold enough to advise the Government that "When you have dug yourself in a hole, you should stop digging." My view is that Cummings made a serious error of judgement when he took the risk of blatantly breaking the spirit of the official advice to stay at home and not to travel, especially if there is a suspected case of covid in your family. Through that error, and its subsequent failure to acknowledge it, the Government has squandered much political capital; the story continues to run and to distract it from the vital task of keeping Covid-19 under control as it moves to restore Britain's economic and social well-being.

Cummings not going

The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has shown us a way to save our country many £billions, money which would certainly come in useful at this time of astronomical borrowing by his Government. His solution would render the whole legal system superfluous: the judiciary could be pensioned off, the lawyers sent on permanent unpaid furlough. There would be no further need for courts, juries (already under threat during lock-down), clerks, bailiffs, chambers, or any of the elaborate paraphernalia of the law. It might bring temporary hardship to the makers of barristers’ wigs but the more enterprising among them could surely find new openings with the closure of barbers shops by offering wigs to cover the shaven pates of the general public. Who needs hair-dressers anyway?

On 27-28th March Johnson’s main political advisor, Domenic Cummings. (mentioned in an earlier post on this blog), travelled with his wife and 4-year-old son from London to his parents’ home near Durham in north-east England, a journey of some 250 miles. This act appears to have broken the Government's lock-down rules to stay at home and self-isolate if a family member (e.g. his wife, the journalist Mary Wakefield in this case) has coronavirus symptoms. Cummings’s excuse was their need to find child care in case they both fell sick. Since this story broke in The Guardian newspaper, Cummings has been under heavy fire with calls for his head from his many opponents -- you can’t be a radical reformer of the British political system without making enemies.

Yesterday afternoon the Prime Minister appeared on TV to defend his right-hand man against charges that he broke the lockdown laws. During the broadcast Johnson told his now less-than-admiring public that he had spoken to Cummings and had come to the unequivocal conclusion that Cummings had acted “responsibly, legally and with integrity” by ignoring the rules, while the overwhelming majority of his viewers had made significant, even heroic, sacrifices by following them. There are many unanswered questions surrounding Cummings’s movements during the lock-down -- nineteen of them according to Amy Jones in the Daily Telegraph, a broadsheet that usually supports conservative administrations -- and Johnson patently failed to answer any of them. He simply pronounced the defendant innocent by personal diktat. There was no need to investigate further, no need to hear the allegations or cross-question the witnesses, no need to examine the evidence or invoke the law. Johnson’s version of summary justice could certainly help to deal with the backlog of 46,000 criminal cases presently awaiting trial. He just needs to have a quick chat with the defendants and pronounce them guilty as charged or, in the case of his friends, innocent and set them free. Silence in court and no legal fees!

Pandemic Progress

Congratulations to South Korea and New Zealand. They appear to have the virus SARS-CoV-2 firmly under control, with days when new cases are in single digits, often zero. They are smallish countries that were well prepared, have trust in their political leadership and respect for scientific evidence, as well as social discipline and a sense of national purpose. That's one kind of progress.

Meanwhile the virus itself makes its relentless progress through Europe, Russia, the USA, and increasingly through the poorer countries in Africa and South America. The United Kingdom, where I live, has not been doing well, with over 28,000 deaths by 5th May. We made a slow start, with poor supplies of protective equipment and little testing capacity. Care homes have been particularly poorly served with many covid deaths not included in the official figures.

This must be a particularly hard time for right-thinking people. For those who scorn science and believe in intelligent design, this must present a real philosophical challenge when they are constantly confronted with epidemiological evidence and the value genetic analysis, not to mention the fact that SARS-CoV-2 is constantly mutating and evolving. Speaking truth to power is also tough when those in power regard imparting unpalatable information as an act of disloyalty. When safe and effective vaccines are available, there will be further uncomfortable decisions for those who believe vaccination is a wicked government conspiracy. 

Today the UK Government announced a trial launch of its track-and-trace mobile phone app. This pilot is restricted initially to the approximately 140,000 inhabitants of the Isle of Wight, which sits close to south coast of the English mainland and was once a favoured holiday resort for Queen Victoria. As predicted in an earlier post, this app has been developed by the NHSX digital team and will be centrally managed. As such, there are already criticisms of its weak privacy safeguards and the questionable background of some recently-hired team members. This contrasts with the app being developed jointly by Apple and Google in the USA, which operates locally and has more stringent protection against the misuse of the information gathered. To be really effective it will need to be adopted by at least 50% of the population. Since it cannot be made mandatory, it seems an ambitious aspiration that so many will be prepared to sacrifice their privacy for the sake of the greater good. I hope to be proved wrong.