This week we witnessed the come back of Dominic Cummings to Parliament he was giving evidence to one of the select committees about the history of the Government's reaction, strategy and conduct during the COVID pandemic, which included surreal references to Spider-Man and Independence day Mr Cummings has come a long way since being Michael Gove's Chief of staff and has even been portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch who portrayed him in a film about the role that Mr Cummings played in the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 EU referendum.
It has been the first time that Mr Cummings has been back in the public eye since leaving Downing Street as the Prime Minister Boris Johnsons chief advisor well chief advisor is a bit of understatement as we discovered from watching the footage from Parliament yesterday. it appears that he was formulating policy, directing the civil service and more!
The last year in British politics has been chaotic and especially in Downing Street as Mr. Cummings highlighted yesterday it appears now that the Government didn't have any kind of plan at all to deal with the pandemic. A lot has already been written about the failings of the Government during the past year so I won't really write anything else about the planning but I will write about the judgment of the Prime Minister.
When Mr Cummings went on his trip to Durham last year the Prime Minister and several Ministers leapt to his defense(including if my memory serves correctly the Attorney General) citing that he was an honorable man and had good integrity. Since his departure from Downing Street and more so in the past few weeks those same voices have gone remarkably quiet and they haven't mounted the same defense that they did before.
So that raises a few questions were they truly supportive of him before when he made that trip to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight shorty after that very strange mea culpa Michael Gove came out and said that he did the same thing which was even more surreal, this time Mr Gove hasn't given the same or any energy to his defense. The Prime Minister even sacrificed his message of "stay at home" to defend Mr Cummings you could see the Prime Minister's political capital draining every time he made a press statement about the situation.
Another thing to add is that Mr Cummings said that Boris Johnson wasn't suitable to be Prime Minister at what point did he reach this conclusion? did he think he wouldn't be good for high office when he was coordinating Vote Leave, was it when Mr Johnson was running to be leader after Theresa May resigned in 2019, was it when Mr Johnson first became Prime Minister back in 2019, was it during the turbulent time when he was proroguing parliament or whilst he was working for Mr Johnson from the start of his time in Downing Street. These are important questions to ask because this is the first time that Mr Cummings has made claims like these so why didn't he say this before? if Mr Cummings thought this then he should of resigned a lot earlier and even raised it publically instead so that the country was aware about the character of the Prime Minster that is leading the country.
This whole episode has shown just how chaotic and disorganized the Conservative Party are. They have spent forty years in a civil war over their position on the European Union which lead the country to being heavily divided too. they have bought in toxic austerity to the country and they have mishandled the COVID pandemic. The country deserves a better party in power that won't have destructive drama at the heart of Government.
Mr Cummings is right in his assessment that Mr Johnson isn't fit for office you can see that every week if you tune into Prime Minsters Questions when The prime Minister goes off on a nonsensical rant and just blusters away at Keir Starmer when Keir has just asked Mr Johnson a very simple question. I just wish that Mr Cummings said what he said much much earlier.
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