What else could Dominic Cummings have done?

The question is, does Dominic Cumming’s four-year-old son possess preternatural resilience – a bit like the infant John the Baptist who went off into the desert as a boy. Or does he, like my own children at that age, need a bit of feeding, occasional supervision to stop him playing with matches and a bath at bedtime?

If the former, and the child can fend for himself at this tender age, then it would indeed have been wrong for Mr Cummings and his wife Mary Wakefield (of this parish) to have taken themselves off to Durham, where his family lives, where his sister and nieces were volunteering to take care of the little boy. There, he and his wife, who had come down with coronavirus, could isolate in a separate building knowing their little boy would be looked after if he needed to be.

But if the child is like every other four-year-old, there weren’t that many options available to Mr C.