Opinion

Allison Morris: Don't judge Cummings for his roadtrip, but for the gaslighting of a terrified nation

Dominic Cummings, senior aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, answers questions from the media after making a statement in the garden of Downing Street.
Dominic Cummings, senior aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, answers questions from the media after making a statement in the garden of Downing Street. Dominic Cummings, senior aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, answers questions from the media after making a statement in the garden of Downing Street.

THAT the Conservative government should circle the wagons to protect one of their own should come as no surprise.

That they introduced laws that seemingly don't apply to their elite, inner circle should also shock very few.

But as I watched the bizarre sight of a backroom government adviser in the rose garden of Downing Street, surrounded by a plethora of journalists competing to ask him to apologise over and over again, I did think 'now this I wasn't expecting'.

Dominic Cummings isn't used to being quoted as himself, he's a man who operates almost entirely as what lobby journalists refer to as "a Downing Street source".

Sources can say things they don't mean, that they don't intend to follow though with, even give out information that is totally untrue.

A nameless source is difficult to hold to account.

Cummings, the mastermind behind the Brexit leave campaign, the man who took Boris Johnson from a ziplining buffoon to prime minister, knows this and he knows his strengths were always better served well away from the camera.

He clearly enjoys being an outsider, looking different, operating different and thinking different.

He is the man who came up with 'Take back control', the simple but effective three-word Brexit slogan.

Later he used the same tactic with 'Get Brexit done' a snappy little slogan that means so much and so little, parroted repeatedly by politicians, it helped Boris Johnson win a huge majority at the last election.

And so while unconfirmed officially it is widely believed that Cummings thought up the buzzwords of the Covid crisis, repeated time and time again.

Stay home, save lives, protect the NHS.

Sure who could argue with that?

Except let's think about what Cummings was trying to achieve on behalf of the current Tory administration when he, as is widely believed, came up with this strategy.

It indicates that those who don't slavishly follow not just the legislation but the much more ambiguous guidance are responsible for the collapse of the health service and worse still, the potential deaths of their friends, family or neighbours.

It takes all responsibility for the crisis away from the government and puts it onto the public.

The government who underfunded and sold off parts of the NHS now claiming the public, not them, are responsible for saving the health service.

That a lonely pensioner, a single parent, those feeding their children from food banks are responsible and not the people in power.

They even came up with an online reporting portal where people could inform the authorities if they felt someone wasn't abiding by the rules, and how quickly people complied, suddenly we were all watching each other instead of watching them.

And if you needed proof that those with the power and information not only didn't believe their own advice but didn't bother to follow it, look no further than the behaviour of three of the most influential.

"Stay at home" said the chief medical officer for Scotland, Dr Catherine Calderwood, while she travelled two weekends in a row from her Edinburgh home to her second residence in Fife with her family.

"Save Lives" said government scientific adviser Prof Neil Ferguson, the man whose modelling of the virus's transmission shaped official policy. Prof Ferguson was later forced to resign after he admitted hosting visits from a friend while in lockdown.

"Protect the NHS" said Dominic Cummings as he travelled 260 miles with a wife with suspected Covid and later a sick child who required urgent medical care in a hospital far away from their London base.

I wouldn't judge anyone who broke lockdown laws or breached guidance for the good of people they love.

But I do judge Dominic for helping terrify a population into submission, to the point that they sacrificed their own family's welfare and turned on their neighbours, thinking they were saving the NHS by doing so.

While the two other government officials have resigned Cummings has not, that's a matter for Boris Johnson and not for journalists like me to decide.

What we should be angry at is not his Durham roadtrip, but the gaslighting of a terrified population he helped convince were responsible for the failings of his employers.

May history judge them harshly.