At the centre of the uproar is Dominic Cummings’s 270-mile (430 km) car trip from London to his parents’ farm in Durham in late March
TO HIS DETRACTORS and admirers alike, Dominic Cummings was known variously as the “evil genius” and the Rasputin of Downing Street: a power behind the throne of Boris Johnson. First in the Brexit referendum of 2016 and then in the general election of December 2019, the duo appeared the most successful diviners of public mood of their generation—able to hear the grumblings of discontented suburban England that were inaudible to other politicians.
At the centre of the uproar is Mr Cummings’s 270-mile car trip from London to his parents’ farm in Durham in late March. This was, to many, a clear breach of the government’s rules—which Mr Cummings helped to draw up—that people should “stay at home”. It was all the more worrying given that his wife, and Mr Cummings himself, were already suffering the symptoms of covid-19. Mr Cummings said he had acted in a “reasonable” manner in taking his family to the farm.
If Mr Cummings’s trip was a criminal offence, it was a minor one. Under Britain’s lockdown laws, Britons had been forbidden to leave their homes except to buy groceries, take exercise or for some other “reasonable excuse.” The penalty is a £30 fine for first offenders who pay promptly. Mr Johnson’s defence of his aide—that he had “followed the instincts of every father and every parent”—angered users of Mumsnet, a popular internet chatroom for mothers which serves as a reliable barometer of public opinion. Another gauge is the number of senior clergymen who have publicly criticised the government, among them the Bishop of Leeds, who accused Mr Johnson of treating the public “as mugs”.
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