Why does Boris Johnson defend Dominic Cummings?

Prime Minister Boris Johnson went to the carpet again on Wednesday for his besieged adviser Dominic Cummings, signaling to lawmakers that he had no intention of dismissing Mr. Cummings for breaking the rules while driving 260 miles to his parents’ house during the coronavirus campaign. confinement.

But Mr. Johnson deflected the most telling question in a closely watched and often controversial hearing: why was he hanging on to aid that is clearly damaged?

You have a choice between protecting Dominic Cummings and putting the national interest first, said Yvette Cooper, a Labor Party lawmaker, in a particularly heated exchange. What will it be, Prime Minister?

My choice is the choice of the British people, replied Mr Johnson, before accusing Mrs Cooper of trying to score political points when Britain had to pass a dispute which ignited divided public opinion his Conservative and eroded Party. the popularity of prime ministers.

What they want now is that we focus on them and their needs rather than a political ding-dong on what an adviser may or may not have done, said Johnson to a parliamentary committee .

Wishing to change the subject, he announced his intention to set up a large-scale tracking and localization system to avoid a second peak of infections. Anyone with symptoms will be tested and, if positive, will be asked to list everyone they have recently had close contact with for at least 15 minutes. These people, in turn, will be contacted and asked to isolate themselves for 14 days.

But the fallout from the Cummings case overshadowed this news, as legislator after legislator challenged Johnson on how the government planned to force people to release their contacts or enter quarantine.

Scientists have warned that Mr. Cummings’ breach of the lockout rules would jeopardize public compliance with this system, as well as with the new quarantine regime for arriving travelers starting next month.

Ms. Cooper urged Mr. Johnson to find out if parents with extraordinary child care needs, like what Mr. Cummings said in his case, could ignore government directives to stay home, even if they had symptoms of the virus, as Mr. Cummings’ wife did. The Prime Minister said it depended on the circumstances.

Simon Hoare, a Conservative lawmaker, asked Mr. Johnson if he understood the depth of anger at Mr. Cummings’ behavior, which sent a signal that senior officials did not have to play by the rules. applied to everyone.

I understand people’s feelings, said Johnson. I understand why people feel such outrage.

The premiers who ended their testimony showed once again how dependent he was on Mr. Cummings. The 48-year-old strategist shaped the Johnson government’s agenda, an ambitious plan known as a race to the top, which aims to bridge the economic gap between London and the north of England by spending on rail networks to high speed and other expensive projects. .

Johnson, critics note, has always been more focused on building political power than exercising it for specific purposes. He has little fixed ideology and is able to change position for political reasons. Mr. Cummings, on the other hand, is full of ideas, not all practical. He too resists ideological labels, but is fueled by constant suspicion of established institutions.

Since moving to Downing Street with Johnson last July, Cummings has sowed government departments with loyalists and centralized economic policy in the Prime Minister’s office. His aggressive tactics helped drive out Mr. Johnsons, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid, who was replaced by a younger, more consistent replacement, Rishi Sunak.

Mr. Johnsons’ loyalty to Mr. Cummings has already demanded a high political price, in terms of personal popularity and the credibility of his government. The longer Mr. Johnson stays with his assistant, critics say, the greater the damage if he finally decides to release him.

He had a very binary choice, said Jonathan Powell, former chief of staff to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Either he looks weak letting him go, or he hangs on and it affects the government because the guy is poisonous.

In two decades in politics, Mr. Cummings has acquired a formidable reputation as an activist and disruptor, culminating in his central role in the 2016 Brexit referendum that persuaded the British to leave the European Union.

But he has few allies in the Conservative Party, an organization he seems to have never joined. He was as likely to denigrate Conservative backbenchers as it was to cultivate them, perhaps, because some 40 of them asked Mr. Cummings to resign or be fired.

The ideological traveling companions were not spared either. He once said that members of an outright pro-Brexit parliamentary group in Parliament, the European Research Group, should be treated as a metastasizing tumor and removed from the UK’s body politic.

In the referendum, he observed that some of these pro-Brexit conservative lawmakers were too busy shooting, skiing or chasing girls to do real work. Bernard Jenkin, the chairman of the parliamentary committee that met digitally on Wednesday, was among those he denounced for his criticism.

Among those who felt the whip of Mr. Cummings’ tongue were the former party leader, Iain Duncan Smith (incompetent), and former Brexit secretary, David Davis (thick as chopped, lazy as a toad and vain like Narcissus).

Now Mr. Cummings’ lack of friends in the party has come back to haunt him. Several Conservative lawmakers who called on him to resign made it clear that they had never met him. They included Douglas Ross, who resigned from his post as Under Secretary of State for Scotland to protest; Mark Harper, a former chief whip; and Harriett Baldwin, former minister.

Others simply reacted badly to what they saw and heard. He’s his rider, I don’t care; I am smarter than the tone that infuriates people, wrote on Twitter Mr. Hoare, chairman of the House of Commons’ Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, before the commission hearing in which he participated. I don’t like it, he added.

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