Dominic cummings

‘There is no alternative’: Why Boris will keep winning

Those of us who generally wish this Government well and consider Boris Johnson a preferable holder of the office of prime minister to any likely alternative are facing a new accusation this weekend. The vast brigade of pinko pundits who have predicted Johnson’s downfall on numerous occasions only to be proved wrong each time, have changed tack. They now mostly acknowledge that rows over prorogations or pelmets – or even this week’s Dominic Cummings spectacular – are likely to have only a very limited impact upon public opinion. But they shake their heads sadly at us and tell us this is not the point. Rather, what actually matters is that

Did NHS discharges ‘seed’ Covid into care homes? A look at the data

Did Matt Hancock’s negligence lead to Covid seeding into care homes because patients were not tested before being discharged? This was one of Dominic Cummings’s more potent charges  and it brings back memories for me because I spent a chunk of last summer looking into this. In my line of work, the success rate for stories is quite low: investigate five avenues and you’re likely to find four dead ends. So you end up with a lot of data and research that’s never used, because the original premise doesn’t hold up. I was (and remain) critical of much of government policy on Covid response: it seemed horribly plausible to me that panicked NHS

Robert Peston

Was Matt Hancock guilty of ‘negligence’?

The Health Secretary Matt Hancock has insisted that he promised the Prime Minister and his former chief aide Dominic Cummings only that all elderly and vulnerable patients would be tested for Covid on discharge to a care home when there was adequate testing capacity, and not with immediate effect. This is Hancock’s defence against Cummings’s charge that the Health Secretary lied to him and the PM when promising to test patients prior to them going to a care home. But I understand Cummings has documentary evidence that as late as May last year he and the PM feared they had been misled by Hancock about how he would protect the

Questions about Matt Hancock’s credibility aren’t going away

It was always likely that the evidence given by Dominic Cummings to the health and science joint select committee inquiry yesterday would have quite an impact. Cummings certainly has a flair for communication and a revolutionary zeal. On top of that, he has scores to settle when it comes to the Prime Minister’s conduct and his treatment of his former chief advisor. Interestingly though, one of the main targets of Cummings’s ire yesterday was Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Asked by Labour MP Rosie Cooper to rate the performance of the Health Secretary and the department, Cummings went for the jugular: ‘I think the Secretary of State should have been fired

Katy Balls

Where Cummings’s attacks leave the cabinet

Today’s papers are filled with the numerous allegations levelled against Boris Johnson by Dominic Cummings during his seven hour appearance in front of MPs. The Prime Minister’s former top aide didn’t hold back in his critique, suggesting voters had been offered a poor choice at the 2019 election between Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. Cummings said he believed Johnson was unfit to lead and had been too distracted by his personal life in the early stages of the pandemic when he should have been taking the virus more seriously. He concluded that government mistakes meant tens of thousands of people died ‘who didn’t need to die’.  Unsurprisingly, Cummings is persona non grata in No. 10 these

James Forsyth

How much damage to the government has Dom’s bomb done?

The more anticipated a parliamentary appearance, the less it tends to live up to its billing. But Dominic Cummings’s testimony before MPs on Wednesday was one of the more remarkable parliamentary moments of this century. His attacks on his former boss were jaw–dropping. He said that it wouldn’t have helped if Boris Johnson had chaired Cobra meetings at the start of the crisis since the Prime Minister didn’t take Covid seriously and that it was ‘completely crazy’ that the country had to choose between Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn at the last election (this remark was particularly astonishing given Cummings’s influence on the Conservative campaign). But his criticisms of the entire

Portrait of the week: Bashir’s reckoning, Dominic Cummings’s evidence and ‘secret’ local lockdowns

Home The BBC was engulfed in doubts after a report by Lord Dyson blamed Martin Bashir for deceiving the late Diana, Princess of Wales, before interviewing her on television in 1995 — and the BBC for failing to investigate properly. The Duke of Cambridge said: ‘It brings indescribable sadness to know that the BBC’s failures contributed significantly to her fear, paranoia and isolation that I remember from those final years with her.’ He said that had the BBC properly investigated complaints, ‘my mother would have known that she had been deceived’ before her death in 1997. The former chairman of the BBC, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, resigned as chairman of

Will Cummings’s accusations damage Boris Johnson?

One of Dominic Cummings’s strengths as a campaigner was his genius for a clear message – think ‘Take Back Control’ or ‘Get Brexit Done’. But the case that he was trying to make today was more complicated. He was trying to persuade people both that the Prime Minister was not up to the job and that the system has failed. Cummings’s testimony today made Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech look like a paean of praise The problem for him is that these two arguments cut against each other. If, as he himself acknowledged, even a Bill Gates-style figure would have struggled to deal with the problems of the Whitehall machine then

Kate Andrews

Dominic Cummings’s explosive claim about the Bank of England

Amidst all the explosive claims made by Dominic Cummings during today’s select committee hearing, one towards the beginning of the seven-hour session seemed rather unintentional. When asked by Rebecca Long-Bailey MP about what economic assessments were made when considering the first lockdown, Cummings responded that there was no straight-forward ‘document floating around’ which laid out the ‘economic costs’. He then alleged that conversations were taking place about removing the Bank of England’s independence: ‘It was the case that the Bank of England, the senior officials in the Treasury, senior officials in the Cabinet Office were saying, you know, we have to think about the consequence of, if we do this

Isabel Hardman

Matt Hancock may get his revenge tomorrow

Today we heard more than seven hours of testimony from Dominic Cummings, much of it taking aim at Matt Hancock. Tomorrow it looks as though Hancock will give us several hours of his own take on the way the government – and Cummings – handled the pandemic. This evening, a spokesman for the minister said: ‘At all times throughout this pandemic the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and everyone in DHSC has worked incredibly hard in unprecedented circumstances to protect the NHS and save lives. We absolutely reject Mr Cummings’s claims about the Health Secretary. The Health Secretary will continue to work closely with the Prime Minister

Cummings, Covid and groupthink – a cautionary tale

It is hard to deny the importance of the issues raised this week by Dominic Cummings. His decision to identify the many mistakes made at the start of the pandemic is not about seeking vengeance; it is a vital process to ensure that errors are identified and not repeated. A vaccine-evading variant or a new virus could come along at any time. Should this happen, ministers must be ready. Some of the world’s finest minds worked on pandemic planning, in Britain and throughout the western world. The UK was once ranked as more prepared for a new virus than any country in Europe. But the failure to provide adequate PPE

Steerpike

Matt Hancock’s nine firing offences – according to Dominic Cummings

Dominic Cummings was invited to appear in front of MPs today to talk about the government’s coronavirus response in the early stages of the pandemic. A neutral observer might suggest though that the true purpose of Cummings’s visit was to demolish the health secretary Matt Hancock. Near the beginning of his evidence Cummings suggested that there were ‘at least 15 to 20’ different reasons Hancock should have been fired since the outbreak and described him at various points as a ‘serial liar’, ‘stupid’, ‘disgraceful’ and even, ‘criminal’. By Mr Steerpike’s count, Dominic Cummings has so far given nine reasons that Hancock should have been given the chop, and suggested that

James Kirkup

Boris should be worried about Steve Baker, not Dominic Cummings

While Westminster fixates on Dominic Cummings, what could well be a bigger political challenge for Boris Johnson is being somewhat overlooked. That challenge is called Steve Baker. Baker has now launched his long-whispered campaign over net zero and the policies it entails. He’s in the Sun today talking about issues including gas boilers and the need to replace them with something that doesn’t burn gas. Reaching net zero carbon emissions means a boiler switchover has to happen, and soon. Homes account for about 14 per cent of the UK’s carbon output, and weaning the country off gas boilers is possibly the trickiest bit of making net zero (a legal requirement,

The tragedy of Dominic Cummings

Dominic Cummings’s main concern as he appears in front of MPs is to identify the failures of government and ensure everyone knows they weren’t his failures, but those of the fools who refused to listen to him. It’s rather a tragic final act, for the truth is that Cummings did fail (and, to be fair, he has admitted some of his failings in front of the committee). Not so much as regards the pandemic (although given his influence, it is hard not to assign some culpability to him) but in his stated desire to improve the overall performance of government. For those of us who admired his intellect, his drive and his

What will Cummings say?

As the government puts the final touches to its social distancing review and Foreign Office ministers ponder the best response to the situation in Belarus, it’s a scheduled select committee appearance that is the subject of the most animated chatter in Westminster. Dominic Cummings is due to give evidence before the joint health and science committee inquiry into the government’s Covid response. Boris Johnson’s relationship with his senior aide has dramatically worsened since Cummings left government The session — which is due on Wednesday from 9.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. (Cummings has said he is happy to stay longer) — has been causing nerves in 10 Downing Street for some

Why a Covid public inquiry could prove useful for Boris

The Prime Minister said today there would be a ‘full proper public inquiry’ into the government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis. This is highly significant, because a ‘full, proper public inquiry’ means one led by a judge and with witnesses represented by lawyers. I am also told – though Downing Street is refusing to comment on this – that the Cabinet will be asked by the Prime Minister to approve the terms of the inquiry on Wednesday morning, and there could be an announcement shortly afterwards. Such a public inquiry – like Leveson’s into hacking and Chilcot’s into the decision to go to war in Iraq – would take many years

Dominic Cummings’s Bismarck complex

‘One’s enemies one can count on — but one’s friends!’ Otto von Bismarck quotes have mostly gone out of fashion since the middle of the last century. But perhaps not as far as Dominic Cummings is concerned.  Cummings describes Germany’s first chancellor — and the man responsible for the country’s unification in 1871 — as a ‘monster’. He says in his 2017 blog that ‘the world would have been better if one of the assassination attempts had succeeded’. But it is clear that Cummings seeks inspiration from the Iron Chancellor for his own political doings. When Cummings writes that Bismarck ‘understood fundamental questions better than others’, it’s hard not to think that he

How Tory MPs plan to clip Cummings’s wings

On 26 May, Dominic Cummings will give evidence to MPs grouped on the health and science super committee, chaired by Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clark. This will be box office politically, because – as I have mentioned – Cummings will prosecute Boris Johnson and his scientific advisers for failing to lock down early enough in March 2020, and Johnson and Rishi Sunak – though not the scientists – for failing to lock down in early September (not late September). But the Tory controlled committee will not allow him to use them to humiliate the PM in other ways (though some might say the charge that the PM put thousands lives