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.