Boris Johnson has faced three important tests in the last week: over his government’s coronavirus bereavement scheme; over a visa surcharge applicable to overseas NHS staff and care workers, and over Dominic Cummings. The first two he passed, but the third he failed, and spectacularly so.
His decisions to extend the Home Office’s bereavement scheme and to drop the immigration health surcharge for NHS staff and care workers were welcome changes to previous policies. His decision, however, to publicly defend the actions of his senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, at Sunday’s daily Downing Street briefing was shameful.
Where the first two tests were ones of gratitude and compassion, the third was one of principle and trust. Like any test of political leadership, the head examiners are members of the public, and we have been watching, intently, with red pens in hand.
Let us examine the three tests the Prime Minister faced in turn.
The bereavement scheme test
The first concerned a glaring omission in the Home Office’s bereavement scheme. The scheme was first launched in April at a time when public acrimony was rising over the numbers of health workers, carers, and support staff losing their lives fighting coronavirus. Some of those deaths were foreign nationals from outside of the EU with uncertain immigration statuses. Initially, the Home Office offered indefinite leave to remain to the families and dependants of health workers in the NHS and the independent health and care sector who die as a consequence of contracting coronavirus.
Indefinite leave to remain is an immigration status which carries considerable benefits, including eligibility to work in any job, run a business, use public services, access public funds and pensions, and apply for British citizenship. Someone with indefinite leave to remain status has no time limit on their ability to stay in the country, though their status can lapse where the holder resides outside of the UK for a continuous period of more than two years. Generally, indefinite leave to remain involves an application fee of £2,389 and a further payment of £19.20 to have your biometric information taken; however, the offer in the Home Office’s bereavement scheme is all free of charge.
The launch of the scheme was met with approval; it showed the government wanted to offer its gratitude to the bereaved families and dependants of those whose hard work and sacrifice have helped to keep the public safe. Questions remained, however, as to how widely the scheme would apply. The government then told GMB – the third largest trade union in the country – on Tuesday 19May that the scheme only applied to certain occupations such as nurses, radiographers, psychologists, and biochemists. Social care workers, security officers, porters, cleaners, and catering staff – all of which have put themselves and their families at risk in an effort to protect the wider public – were left out of the scheme.
This decision flew in the face of the government’s attempts – personified above all by the “clap for our carers” tradition every Thursday evening – to promote public gratitude for the sacrifices made by frontline workers and volunteers. It suggested that the government’s gratitude could only extend so far – for those in roles it deemed of sufficient importance. Even though non-healthcare workers undertook the same risks (of contracting coronavirus and dying from it), they were not to be granted the same reward.
Vehement condemnation ensued, with Lola McEvoy, a GMB NHS organiser, describing it as an “outrageous scandal”. Social media followed suit. One individual who helped to bring the issue before public viewing was Hassan Akkad, a Syrian refugee who arrived in the UK in 2015, and the creator of a BAFTA-winning documentary about his perilous journey crossing the Mediterranean. Akkad currently volunteers as a cleaner in the NHS. By Wednesday evening, his video on Twitter calling on Johnson to reverse his decision had been liked over 100,000 times and viewed by almost 5 million people. Thousands of tweets hurled their outrage in the direction of Number 10. The outrage reached fever pitch when an incandescent James O’Brien, a radio presenter on LBC, set aside his usual surly, yet unanimated tone and launched a scathing critique of the government on his channel.
With pressure on the government being applied by a chorus of journalists, MPs, and members of the public, by early Wednesday evening the government altered its position and announced an extension to the bereavement scheme. Boris Johnson and Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, had made the right decision not to privilege particular workers over others. Such a patent dismissal of the contributions made by support staff and care workers would have sent a further message of the government’s selective approach to immigration. While many might approve of the government’s incoming points-based system, very few, in the context of the worst public health crisis in modern history, could countenance such a heartless ousting of the families and dependants of those who have died on our behalf.
Although he had passed this first test of gratitude, a further test of the same nature remained.
The immigration health surcharge test
On the same day as the maelstrom around the bereavement scheme, Johnson appeared in Parliament at Prime Minister’s Questions defending a visa surcharge for non-EEA health workers and carers. This charge had to be paid to allow those overseas workers to make use of the NHS themselves as part of their temporary right to remain status.
The fee, stood then at £400, was due to be increased to £624 in October. At that hiked rate, it would take a care worker on the National Living Wage just over 70 hours of work to pay off the surcharge. When questioned by the Leader of the Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, about the righteousness of subjecting overseas health workers and carers to such treatment, Johnson justified the policy on the grounds that it brought in a valuable contribution to the Exchequer. £900m he claimed.
In fact, figures from the House of Commons Library show that, although £917m has been accrued over the last four years, this number relates to all migrants that have paid the surcharge. When atomised, the loss of revenue for exempting NHS staff would actually be around £35m a year, and slightly more for care workers. In the grand scheme of the economic toll of this crisis, with the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasting a total cost of up to £298bn this fiscal year, that lacuna in the government’s current account would be a mere drop in the ocean.
It was never a question of economics anyway; it was once again a question of gratitude. How could the Prime Minister clap our carers every Thursday when simultaneously saddling many of them with further costs to use the same institution they serve? 153,000 overseas nationals work in our NHS – the majority of which in England are from non-EEA countries – and the government was happy to see them pay a surcharge in addition to their immigration application fee, taxation contribution, and national insurance.
When Johnson spoke of the (literally) life-saving care he had received in an intensive care unit at St Thomas’ hospital in April, he paid tribute to two nurses in particular: “Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal”. In standing by his policy at Prime Minister’s Questions, he was therefore prepared to lay on further debt to nurses like Jenny who not only saved his life, but the lives of thousands of others throughout the country.
The uneasy and hypocritical nature of the policy soon came home to roost. Social media erupted. Leading the charge was Piers Morgan, who exposed the government’s hypocrisy in an explosively penned article in the Daily Mail. A number of Conservative MPs expressed their readiness to join parliamentary colleagues on the opposition benches in a bid to scrap the surcharge. Sir Roger Gale, MP for North Thanet and the former Party Vice-Chair, described it as “mean spirited”. The former Chair of the Party, Lord Patten, went further, labelling it as “immoral and monstrous”. Even Jeremy Hunt, ironically the man who introduced the charge during his tenure as Health Secretary, called for a rethinking of policy.
On a day when the public became conscious of not one, but two ungrateful government policies, Johnson had a decision to make: to succumb or hold firm. Had he refused to change tack, it could have resulted in a backbench backlash, not to mention the haemorrhaging of public support. To land those we honour for saving lives with a bill would not so much have been hypocritical as it would have been unjust. No reasonable person with a human heart and a moral conscience could regard the surcharge as palatable. According to the latest figures (which for care workers are a month out of date), 181 NHS workers have died from coronavirus in England and 131 care workers in England and Wales. The real number across the UK is likely to be significantly higher.
With the clock counting down to the weekly clap for our carers, Johnson decided to drop the immigration health surcharge at the eleventh hour (5pm on Thursday to be precise, just before the daily Downing Street briefing). This represented the first major policy reversal in his premiership. Where the extension of the bereavement scheme was a concession, removing NHS staff and care workers from the surcharge was a veritable U-turn. Starmer heralded the change in policy as a “victory for common decency”. That it was.
Any bad decision, if rectified, is worthy of credit. So, Johnson gets another pass on that test of gratitude.
The Dominic Cummings test
A third test followed in quick succession when a major story broke out on Friday evening. A joint investigation by the Daily Mirror and the Guardian revealed that Dominic Cummings, the Senior Adviser to the Prime Minister, had allegedly broken the government’s coronavirus lockdown rules. How? By driving 260 miles from London to stay at his parent’s estate in County Durham so his four-year old son could receive childcare after his wife had developed coronavirus symptoms. Well, that was only the first alleged breach.
After numerous government ministers circled the wagons on Twitter, racing to Cummings’ defence on an exculpatory appeal of paternal instinct, a second story broke on Saturday evening about a further breach. This time, a joint investigation by the Sunday Mirror and the Observer revealed that, on 12 April, Cummings had been spotted with his wife and son in Barnard Castle, a small market town 30 miles from his family estate.
These two alleged breaches completely dominated the country’s news headlines at the weekend. Barnard Castle, hitherto a hidden jewel in North East England, had been placed firmly on the map. The stories provoked a cacophony of incensed journalists, politicians from all corners, and members of the public. Their anger – of which I shared, and continue to share – centred on a simple, yet incontrovertible sentiment: how is it fair that the man who helped to create the rules feels it is acceptable to break them himself? There can be no denying the endless difficulties endured by millions in the UK throughout this public health crisis. People have been unable to spend time with loved ones in hospitals and care homes, to sit with them in their last moments and, in many cases, to even attend their funerals. The anger has been palpable, and it is not unwarranted.
Sunday was a crucial day in this third test of Boris Johnson’s leadership. That morning saw a steady flow of Conservative backbenchers call for Cummings to resign, starting with Steve Baker, the former Chairman of the European Research Group. Baker, a man who knows Cummings better than most from their time spent together on the Vote Leave campaign, wrote in the Critic that “enough is enough”. 25 other Conservative MPs made their feelings public, though many others no doubt harboured the same thoughts. The public mood was clearer still. YouGov released two surveys of people polled the day before; 52% of those surveyed thought that Cummings should resign (with 28% in disagreement), while 68% thought that he had broken the lockdown rules.
When it was announced that Johnson would front the daily briefing on Sunday evening, there was an expectation that something big was about to happen. Some thought he would offer a legal justification for Cummings’ transgressions; others postulated an announcement of Cummings’ firing. Instead, what we got was an uncorroborated assent to the actions of a father who was simply following “instincts”. So, there we had it. Millions of us, day in, day out, following rules when really, we should have been following instincts. The air was pungent with an uncomfortable whiff of a hypocrisy reminiscent of Jacob Rees Mogg’s comments about the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. According to our leaders, instincts, or rather common sense, should trump compliance with rules.
The idea that Cummings in every respect “acted responsibly, legally and with integrity” were further comments that ground the public’s gears. Integrity is not a word one immediately associates with Boris Johnson: a man fired twice for dishonesty throughout his career, and someone who once agreed to help a (future) convicted fraudster in a plot – which, fortunately, never happened – to beat up a journalist. He is hardly the man to act as an arbiter on the meaning of integrity.
Following the briefing, to say social media erupted would be an understatement. People were furious. We were expecting answers, but we were given nothing. No added facts; no legal justification. Most tellingly of all, several members of the government’s scientific advisory groups came forth in their condemnation of Johnson’s defence of Cummings. Professor Stephen Reicher, a member of SPI-B, the government advisory group on behavioural science, wrote that Johnson: “had trashed all the advice we had given on how to build trust and secure adherence to the measures necessary to control COVID-19”. The anger seeped into the Conservative Party too. One MP from the so-called new “blue wall” in North England said that they were ******* “livid” and called for a proper inquiry. Perhaps the most surprising moment came immediately after the briefing when someone logged into the UK Civil Service Twitter account and wrote: “Arrogant and offensive. Can you imagine having to work with these truth twisters?”.
Johnson had failed this test of trust in every respect. In an attempt to maintain his strongest weapon in an increasingly presidential government, he had thrown himself in front of his chief aide to absorb as much of the fallout as possible. It was clear Johnson felt he could not cope without Cummings, his Chief of Staff in all but name. He had taken presidentialism in the UK to a new level, attacking “campaigning newspapers” in a way that echoed a well-known Trumpian stratagem. His defence of Cummings’ alleged breaches of the rules, based on no material evidence, had shamefully debased the country’s political accountability standards. The public mood was captured best by the headline in the Daily Mail: “What planet are they on?”.
The Rose Garden press conference
With the name Dominic Cummings trending on social media and being bandied about in every household up and down the country, Number 10 decided that Cummings himself should offer an explanation of what had happened. A press conference was scheduled for 4pm in the Rose Garden at Downing Street on Monday afternoon. This was an unprecedented development in British political history: a special adviser appearing on national television to justify their actions. Not only did it breach rule 14 of the special adviser’s code of conduct, which clearly states that advisers should not participate in any “political controversy through any form of statement”, but it was also a complete waste of time. Summoning Cummings to sit there, albeit at a table which resembled a tombola stand at a village fete, was necessary; however, the format of the conference was of no value.
Cummings’ late arrival (30 minutes to be precise) set the tone for what would be an hour confirming that he lacked respect and dignity. No explanation was offered for his tardiness; the nation just sat there, on their bank holidays, incredulous. It rubbed salt further into the wounds of people who have endured so much by way of government rules in recent months.
To effectively be told, sit and wait, I will come out when I am ready, beggars belief.
After Cummings’ 14-minute explanatory statement, from which we learned of some new details about his circumstances, he answered a series of questions from the Political Editors of the principal British media outlets. The reason why this format was so ineffective is because those Editors virtually asked the same questions, either worded differently or with a slight variation in emphasis. Questions like “do you regret what you did”, “what is your message to the British people who feel angry”, or “is it one rule for you and another for everyone else”, though important, are easy to dodge. These sorts of questions are looking for headlines, not answers. The journalists present needed to ask simple, factual questions in response to the information Cummings had given in his statement. It is perhaps understandable they asked what they did given the limited window of opportunity they had in front of Cummings, and the fact that they had probably consulted with colleagues about what headline sound bites they wished to tease out of his mouth for the morning newspapers.
To make the press conference worth everyone’s time, there should have been a number of changes. A copy of Cummings’ written statement should have been circulated to the Editors, in camera, a few hours ahead of the conference. That way, as in a legal trial, the Editors could properly cross-examine Cummings with reference to his claims. Relatedly, the conference should have taken an inquisitorial form, with evidence adduced to support his claims and bringing forward witnesses, from his wife and family members in County Durham, to those he works with and those involved in the newspaper reports, such as the Durham Constabulary and the eye witness at Barnard Castle.
Some might say an inquiry is going too far. My response would be that what we saw on Monday did not go far enough. Cummings was under no oath – so there can be no later conviction of perjury for some of his false claims – and an expedited press conference is insufficient to acquit someone of a potential criminal offence. Ultimately, this matter of public interest is of the highest order of magnitude. One of the chief architects of the coronavirus lockdown messaging and rules, as a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, has allegedly breached the same rules he had helped to design.
Much to mine and the public’s frustration, the press conference raised more questions than it provided answers about Cummings’ movements from Friday 27 March to Monday 13 April. I looked on as disbelief as journalists missed their opportunity to ask what a barrister would call the “killer question”. Garry Gibbon of Channel 4 News arguably asked the most probing questions about when Cummings first told the Prime Minister he was in County Durham and whether his trip was mentioned again before the story broke out. Nevertheless, more probing questions remained unasked. Cummings should have been asked about the obvious coincidence of 12 April not only being Easter Sunday, but also the birthday of his wife, Mary Wakefield. He should have also been questioned about why he did not ask one of Mary’s brothers, who lives in London, for childcare assistance when the couple thought they were going to be incapacitated. Another question should have been about how he was able to drive to a hospital on Friday 3 April when his eyesight had been supposedly affected by the onset of coronavirus symptoms. And, of course, he should have been asked the crucial question about whether Mary can drive – something we know to be true from an article written by Mary herself in 2012.
Although raised at one point in the conference, Mary’s article in the Spectator on 23 April this year describing her and her husband’s experience of coronavirus merited further investigation. That article described events inconsistent with Cummings’ public statement. Where Mary stated that “day in, day out for 10 days he lay doggo” in bed, Cummings said (at 07:25) that on the morning of Friday 3 April he drove to hospital to collect his son up from hospital. He also said (at 07:50) that, after he had started to recover, on one day in the second week of isolation – which must have been between Sunday 5th April and Saturday 11th April – he tried to walk outside of the house. This was when he was spotted by people on a walk in the woods on his father’s estate. Mary’s claim then, that her husband was unable to move from his bed for 10 days, does not hold water. Cummings must have got out of bed at least twice during his isolation. The falsity of Mary’s claim is thrown into sharper relief when we consider that she also wrote: “Just as Dom was beginning to feel better, it was reported that Boris was heading in the other direction, into hospital”. We know that Johnson was first admitted to hospital on 5 April. Cummings could hardly have spent 10 days lying in bed if he was beginning to recover on that date.
While seemingly trite, the act of unpicking Mary’s article is significant because it demonstrates how one might call into question claims made by a witness and assign the relevant weight to their testimony. The same can, and should, be done with Cummings’ statement. The most striking example of a false statement was when Cummings claimed (at 03:57): “last year I wrote about the possible threat of coronaviruses and the urgent need for planning”. Superficially, that statement is true because he wrote an article on 4 March 2019 about the potential causes of global pandemic; however, references to SARs and coronavirus were only added between Thursday 9 April and Sunday 3 May this year. Such was the determination of the man to cover his back, he doctored his own blog post. Either he seriously believed he could convince people that he predicted the pandemic, or, more plausibly, he knew his day of interrogation would come and he was trying to paper over the cracks in his story. If a court of law or tribunal considered that a principal witness had made misrepresentations, then they would assign less weight to their overall testimony. This would, in turn, call into question many of the other claims upon which Cummings’ case rested, not least the 60-mile round trip to Barnard Castle in order to test his eyesight.
The nature of the factual matrix offered by Cummings in his statement and the follow up questions gave the impression that it had been reverse-engineered. To a layperson, there appeared to be a tenuous, yet deliberately credible explanation for every aspect of the story. To a lawyer, it looked as though lawyers themselves had been involved in the drafting of the statement. A lot of specific details seemed to have been added in order to explain away any adverse inference: that is to say a legal inference, adverse to Cummings, drawn from silence or absence of necessary evidence.
On the subject of law, many lawyers commented on Twitter immediately after the statement that Cummings had broken the law on more than one account. The best legal analysis I have read on the matter was penned yesterday by Syed Soni, a criminal barrister. The crux of the lawfulness question is whether Cummings’ trip was a “reasonable excuse” to leave his London residence within the meaning of Regulation 6(2) of the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020. In short, Soni argues that it is difficult to see how the journey to Durham was essential, even in the context of Cummings’ childcare concerns. Similarly, Cumming’s suggestion that part of the motivation to flee to Durham was due to an intolerable hostility outside his London residence does not constitute a reasonable excuse. At the very least, there appears to have been a prima facie breach of the regulations insofar as the Durham trip is concerned. The same can be said of the notorious “test drive” to Barnard Castle. Even if that somehow constituted a reasonable excuse to move around, then Cummings would likely be guilty of an offence under Section 96 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 for driving with defective eyesight (provided that part of the story is true).
There are so many facets of Cummings’ story that require more thorough questioning. Why did he go back into work on the afternoon of Friday 27 March if he suspected his wife had coronavirus? Had everyone really contracted the virus working in Number 10 at the time? Why did he not contact viable childcare providers in London, like Mary’s brother? If he had security concerns at his London residence, did he ever contact the central unit security team at Number 10 for help? Why did he decide to put his four-year old son at risk in order to test his eyesight?
The elephant in the room is, of course, the question of his eyesight. It had something of a Prince Andrew “Pizza Express in Woking moment” to it. Like Prince Andrew, it seemed as though Cummings thought he could handle the British public on his own and pull the wool over our eyes. As far as I can tell, poor eyesight had not been hitherto discussed as a symptom of coronavirus. It does not appear on any country’s official list of symptoms. Even scientists maintain that the evidence is lacking about whether or not coronavirus affects an individual’s eyesight. Professor Chris Hammond, Frost Chair of Ophthalmology at King’s College London, said: “there aren’t any reports that I can find in the literature of anyone having visual loss due to the virus”. Johnson himself clearly thought he could assist Cummings’ cause at Monday’s daily briefing when he pulled out (at 1.33) a pair of glasses, claiming he is having “to wear spectacles for the first time in years”. However, he wrote an article in the Daily Mail in 2014 that he was “as blind as a bat”. How he could have journeyed from such visual impairment to a full eyesight recovery in the space of 6 years would be remarkable if it were not so implausible.
Even if, on the basis of Cummings’ inconclusive testimony, you think that he kept to the letter of the law, it is unequivocal that he infracted the spirit of the law. Those rules, which carry a fine of £60, and a criminal offence if unpaid, were designed to provide the legal scaffolding to a core public health message. That message – as it was then – could not have been clearer: “Stay at Home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives”. Whilst we do not know for certain, it is reasonable to speculate that Cummings helped to draft these words. Given that “Take Back Control” and “Get Brexit Done” were his brainchilds, he clearly possesses a particular talent for formulating pithy slogans.
The act of driving 260 miles to seek childcare – which was never actually used – is firmly outside of the spirit of the government’s message of “Stay at Home”. So, either that spirit was broken by Cummings, or the rules were so poorly communicated that millions of people struggled in compliance with them where they apparently did not need to. Cummings should have taken the honourable course of action and resigned. Instead, the first words (at 14:59) he uttered in response to the first question by the media was: “no I don’t regret what I did”. Not even a whimper of remorse from a man who had applied an instinctive approach in his interpretation of the rules, when the government he serves had been telling people to follow a literal approach. What a staggering lack of empathy.
The case for firing Dominic Cummings
In reality though, none of this needed to happen as Johnson should have fired Cummings at the first opportunity. His acceptance of Cummings’ story represents a gross failure of leadership. If, as Cummings said (at 0:07), Johnson heard the same account of his actions on Sunday afternoon, then the Prime Minister’s judgement is shocking. There are two clear cases for why Cummings should have been fired: out of pragmatism, and out of principle.
Although the pragmatic case is so easy to see, Johnson clearly needs to put his spectacles on. Perhaps he has done that now after learning of the JL Partners polls in the Daily Mail this morning. Yesterday was bad enough for the Prime Minister when it was revealed that his approval ratings had dropped to -1%, down from its peak at 48% on 8 April. Government approval has also entered the negative zone, plummeting by 16 points in a single day. Today’s polls are arguably a worse look for the Prime Minister, and they will concern him deeply. Having heard from Johnson and Cummings, it seems a majority of the public are not buying the story. Indeed, 61% answered that the reason Cummings has not been sacked is because he is being protected by Johnson. Moreover, 70% disagreed with Johnson’s defence that Cummings acted “responsibly, legally and with integrity”. Most worryingly for Johnson though, his perception of being the best political leader has fallen by 5% since the Cummings story first broke out; whereas Sir Keir Starmer has enjoyed a 7% increase. The two leaders now stand within only 3% of each other.
The unwavering support of Cummings is fast burning through the government’s political capital. Steve Baker warned Johnson of the collateral damage that supporting Cummings would cause in an appearance on the Sophy Ridge Show early on Sunday morning. Revealingly, (at 02:54) Baker said that Cummings “holds in contempt any effort to hold him accountable to others” and “he fights against any attempt to control him or direct him”. Although Cummings appeared before the media, a perception of a lack of accountability now plagues the government. Of those surveyed in the JL Partners polls, 59% thought Cummings came across as arrogant in his press conference, and 70% agreed with the following statement: “it is one rule for them and another rule for everyone else”. Dominic Cummings, a figure hitherto unknown to most people, has now become the symbol of the unaccountable elite he sought to remove from influence in politics. By supporting him, Boris Johnson has nailed his reputation to that same symbol of unaccountability, nay untouchability.
The Cummings issue is producing continued adverse effects for the Conservative Party. Douglas Ross, MP for Moray, resigned as Under-Secretary of State for Scotland yesterday. In offering his reasoning, he stated: “I cannot in good faith tell [my constituents] they were all wrong and one senior adviser was right”. It is such a pity that talented MPs feel they have to resort to resigning from their posts in order for Johnson to listen. The one person who should be resigning with immediate effect is Dominic Cummings. That is precisely what 35 Conservative MPs are calling for this morning. Johnson needs to hear their call or risk opening up divisions within his Party, which, if ongoing, may result in the tabling of a no confidence vote. All that would be needed is 15% of Conservative MPs to request one by writing to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee. With 365 Conservative MPs in Parliament, it would take 55 of them to trigger a vote – only 20 more MPs than those currently calling for Cummings to resign. Johnson needs – to recycle a phrase – to take back control of his Party.
Not only does Johnson seem to have shut out the obvious case for pragmatism, but also the case for principle. At a time of national crisis, we need a leader who sees both cases, especially the latter. The Cummings issue is, above all, about public trust: a commodity that is hard to win, but easy to lose. The JL Partners polls today tell a sad story: one of a government which has lost its moral authority. Indeed, 65% of those surveyed said that Cummings’ conduct will make it less likely people will follow lockdown rules. This is nothing short of an outrage. To protect the job of one man, Johnson is prepared to put at risk the lives of thousands. No one, however talented or central to government policy, is that indispensable.
The removal of Cummings has nothing to do with Brexit, nothing to do with scalp-hunting, as some have suggested; it is about maintaining public adherence to rules necessary to save lives. As John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty: “the only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilised community against his will is to prevent harm to others”. That quote illustrates the situation we have been in for the last 11 weeks, and the situation we need to maintain if we are to beat coronavirus. We can ill-afford a serious erosion of public trust at this juncture in the crisis. A corollary would be the loosening of compliance at a stage when we still have so much work to do.
The problem for the government now is that the regulations, which previously represented an apolitical national effort, have been coloured by politics. By defending a political figure on social media, government ministers have served to politicise an apolitical public health message at a critical moment in the coronavirus response strategy. It is less than a week until the launch of the “test, track and trace” system, which will necessarily involve many of us being asked to self-isolate. In order for this co-ordinated system to take over the hard work of suppressing the virus, the government needs people to follow rules not interpret them. While Cummings remains in office, it sends a signal that the government sanctions considerable latitude in the interpretation of the rules. An interpretation-based message will in turn render the police unable to enforce the rules. It also means that lockdown in many people’s minds is now de facto repealed, when in fact it is not.
The solution
If there are two things the British public despise, it is unfairness and being taken for fools. A key mantra of public morality is that no one is, or ever should be, above the law in this country. We have already seen Professor Neil Ferguson resign as a government adviser and Dr Catherine Calderwood resign as Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer following transgressions of the rules. Given that 80% of those polled today (including 74% of Conservative voters) think Cummings broke the lockdown rules, public morality needs to be honoured. Only then can public health be best protected.
As we approach the Prime Minister’s Liaison Committee before the House of Commons today, the Cummings issue remains front and centre in the news. This issue needs a line drawn under it. The government have more important priorities to focus on. The UK remains one of the worst affected countries in the world with almost 60,000 excess deaths. Cummings must go now. He must either resign, or Johnson must summon the courage to fire his chief political aide. The question is: will either of them pass this test of principle?