The furore surrounding top Downing Street aide Dominic Cummings’ perceived breach of the coronavirus stay-at-home lockdown rules by travelling 260 miles to his parents’ home refused to die down on Monday.
The Opposition branded British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s defence of Cummings as an “insult” to all the sacrifices made by the British public during the pandemic, with a growing number of parliamentarians within Johnson’s own Conservative Party calling for his Chief Strategy Adviser to be sacked.
“This was a test of the Prime Minister and he has failed it. It is an insult to sacrifices made by the British people that Boris Johnson has chosen to take no action against Dominic Cummings,” said Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition Labour Party.
His Indian-origin shadow foreign secretary, Lisa Nandy, added: “The Prime Minister confirms it’s one rule for his friends and another rule for the rest of us. All that sacrifice, stress and pain. What an insult.”
Acting Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey said sacking Cummings was a must to restore credibility around the government’s public health messaging.
“The instruction the Prime Minister gave us all to stay at home has been breached by his top adviser and that’s what you can’t get away from in this story, it’s pretty simple,” he said.
Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon accused Johnson of “putting his political interest ahead of the public interest”. “When trust in a public health message and public health advice is as important as it is right now the consequences could be very serious,” she said.
At the daily Downing Street briefing on Sunday evening, Johnson had thrown his weight behind his chief adviser and declared that he had followed the “instincts of every father” when he made the journey to Durham in north-east England on March 31 to ensure child care for his young son as he began displaying symptoms of coronavirus.
“He acted responsibly, legally and with integrity, and with the overall aim of stopping the spread of the virus and saving lives,” Johnson concluded, after what he said was an “extensive” face-to-face meeting with his top aide.
UK newspapers have reported at least two further allegations of lockdown breaches by his aide, with Johnson saying that “some” of the claims were “palpably false” but refusing to elaborate.
However, besides a flurry of media questions right after, there was also an embarrassing rogue social media message on the official UK Civil Service Twitter account, accusing the UK PM of arrogance.
“Arrogant and offensive. Can you imagine having to work with these truth twisters,” read the Tweet on @UKCivilService – which was taken down after roughly nine minutes but not before it was shared thousands of times.