Cummings is thrashed

Dominic Cummings is best known to people outside the British Isles for being the man portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in the film Brexit: The Uncivil War as the architect of the victory by Leave in the Brexit referendum.  A Romanian data consultant told me it was essential viewing to discover the power of data and the uses that can be made of it. 

To some extent Dominic Cummings is the architect of the Leave victory, along with Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Angela Merkel and that now forgotten figure David Cameron. In the UK Dominic Cummings is therefore hated not only by the left but by the Remain establishment that rules the country.

He is now in very hot water for travelling 260 miles with his wife, the journalist Mary Wakefield, and their son to leave them at a cottage near his sister who had offered to look after the boy, because his mother showed symptoms of Covid-19. 

This is within the British lockdown rules. The deputy chief medical officer for England said from the start of the lockdown that ill parents with a small child created “exceptional circumstances” which justified leaving the house, which obviously must be right, but the media is out to get Dominic Cummings and has got much of the public on its side.

Dominic Cummings and his wife both went down badly with Covid-19. The strange thing is that had they driven four miles to leave their son with his aunt no-one would have cared, but 260 miles in the privacy of their car for some reason makes this a grave offence.

We learnt from Dominic Cummings' very nervous interview with the media in the rose garden at No 10 Downing St that he was always in favour of the lockdown, not opposed as the media had falsely claimed. This shows the media in a bad light and him in a bad one too.

What should be clear to everyone, in all parties, is that at this moment Dominic Cummings is badly needed. We saw how few talents the government has when Boris went into hospital. 

In the current emergency this is no time to make political capital but of course political journalists who have been forced to try and largely fail to understand epidemiology for months want a crisis to get their teeth into.

What matters when all this is over is that the lockdown is shown to have been a terrible mistake. Otherwise we shall have more lockdowns when more epidemics appear. Instead, the British seem to have a lust for enforcing lockdowns, spiced with chippiness and class prejudice.

An unknown junior minister at the Scotland Office resigned yesterday because Dominic Cumming's view of the lockdown rules was 'not shared by the vast majority of people'. He had backed Remain, of course. 35 Tory MPs have called on Cummings to consider his position but one told the Spectator they will not get rid of him until at least 70 do. 


I said when the father of the lockdown, Prof. Neal Ferguson, was caught breaking the lockdown to visit someone else's wife that that wouldn't matter if he were a useful government adviser (he wasn't and unlike Mr Cummings he broke the rules). I hope for the country's sake that Mr Cummings stays, but Tories are terrified of being considered elitists who consider they are exempt from the rules with which they bind ordinary people.