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!