The ferocious bias against Dominic Cummings

At Dominic Cummings’s press conference on Monday, reporters tried two lines of attack. One was to behave like local detectives, fixating on exact details of the Cummings family journey to Barnard Castle, such as why the car had stopped en route (answer: so that the Cummingses’ son, aged four, could have a pee). The other was to invoke viewers, readers, members of the public blind with fury that there was ‘one law’ for government bigwigs, and ‘another’ for everyone else. Yet Mr Cummings’s statement and answers made a good case that there had not been ‘one law’ for him, but that he had the ‘reasonable excuse’ that the law permits for everyone, given the needs of his son. His central case held up, yet most of the media would not accept this. Of course large numbers of the public will be furious if they think Mr Cummings got privileged treatment, but why do they think he did? Because the same media repeatedly told them so, without establishing the facts. Here, for instance, is Laura Kuenssberg on BBC radio news on Monday morning: ‘The Prime Minister has defended behaviour that is in conflict with what he told millions of people to do.’ The government machine and Mr Cummings himself may also have been at fault in not telling the full story earlier; but, as he hinted, things have often not gone well in the past when greater ‘openness’ has been offered. This is because there is a media bias against Mr Cummings more ferocious than any I have ever seen (except, perhaps, that against Boris Johnson), including frequent intimidation outside his front door in London. This bias exists partly because of his Brexit triumph, partly because he is often rude to journalists. There is no more huffy, self-important trade than mine, so his attitude is understandable.