Boris Johnson has a choice: to keep his chief adviser or to maintain the credibility of the U.K. government’s lockdown rules
calling for Cummings to be sacked had collected more than 50,000 signatures on Sunday. This is bad news for Johnson, who is due to face the House of Commons’ liaison committee made up of senior MPs on Wednesday and will certainly be quizzed on why he has stuck by his adviser despite the apparent breaches of the rules.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps toured the TV studios Sunday to deny the latest allegations from the Observer and Sunday Mirror newspapers, telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr that Cummings would not resign. “You’re right, everyone’s been making huge sacrifices … the key thing is not to keep moving around but we’ve never told people specifically where they have to locate themselves,” he said, adding that “Mr. Cummings decided that the best way to provide that security was to be in a location where the sister and the niece could drop food off on the doorstep.” He also said Cummings had not returned to Durham afterward for a second time. “When he came back to London, which was on 14th April, he has remained in London since and hasn’t been back to Durham, so there are lots of things being said here which are completely untrue,” he told Sky’s Ridge. But he conceded he did not know whether Cummings had stopped during his 250-mile journey up to Durham — potentially infecting other people en route. And asked about the alleged witness sighting of Cummings in Barnard Castle on Easter Day, 30 miles from Durham, Shapps told Marr, “I don’t know about whether those reports are true or false.” Shapps conceded that Cummings’ father had spoken to police — contrary to what the transport secretary had said at a press conference on Saturday. But he said it was the police who had been contacted by Cummings’ father, not the other way round. Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said there should be an urgent investigation by the Cabinet Office and Johnson should take Sunday’s daily government press conference to provide answers. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party wrote last night to Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill, Thomas-Symonds told Marr show that “the allegations we’ve seen are extraordinarily serious and they do need to be dealt with.” He urged Johnson to chair the daily press conference Sunday to answer questions directly.
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