Dodging the lockdown: Something fishy at No.10

I HAVE so far stood aloof from the Cummings affair, aware that any intervention from me could be a tipping point in the the government’s struggle to contain a national crisis of confidence.

Now that Cummings has had his say, I feel free to renounce my vow of silence.

For overseas readers, and for those who might have been in a coma for the last three days, I should explain that the scandal involves Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s top aide, and his decision to flee London in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown.

Johnson has stood by his man, saying Dom was in full compliance with government guidance to “follow his instincts” by decamping from the capital for the distant pastures of his parents’ estate in County Durham.

The Cummster drove the 260 miles with his already Covid-infected wife and their young son in order to have family child care on hand in case he too should succumb.

I think the government missed a trick when it issued its “stay at home” instructions at the start of the lockdown. It should have made crystal clear that the rule did not apply to those whose relatives had provincial properties with separate living accommodation in ample grounds.

In that way, it would have been obvious that such individuals were free to sacrifice themselves by travelling long distances in order to free up the hard-pressed care and charity sectors to look to the needs of all the other self-confining parents.

Cummings, of course, is a big believer in socialised health care for all, having invented the “£350 million a week for the NHS” slogan on the side of Johnson’s Brexit battle bus to proclaim just one of the benefits of leaving the European Union.

He last appeared briefly in these columns on March 31, some days after he was seen scurrying around the back of Downing Street.

As I wrote at the time, Johnson’s apostle of “weirdos and misfits” in government is a self-declared disrupter who would like to sweep away the messy compromises of the state.

With his trademark care-in-the-community woolly hat, crumpled T-shirt and torn jeans, he has brought a breath of fresh air to the stuffy corridors of Westminster.

These very accoutrements may, however, have risked his downfall as they made him easily spottable by the eagle-eyed public of County Durham.

Happily the usual suspects have risen to his defence. His techno-libertarian friends have denounced the Gestapo mentality of the curtain-twitching general public who snitched to the police about his whereabouts.

Notable among them has been online magazine Spiked, which moved to the looney right after emerging from the ashes of Living Marxism, journal of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

Most of the old gang are still onboard and are therefore well equipped to tell us of the perils of informers and the police state.

Editor and former Troskyist Brendan O’Neill, an old RCP hand, opined that bending the rules like Cummings was one of the “wonderful buds of human rebellion in this dystopia we find ourselves in”.

“It isn’t Cummings who should be ashamed – it’s the shutdown Stalinists who are calling for his head because he dared to visit his folks.”

Brendan’s view appears to be that, if Dom wasn’t entirely in favour of a strict lockdown, he was entirely free to ignore its strictures.

It’s a point of view, but one that may not cut Dom much slack in the face of the anger of much of the country’s clearly Stalinist public that is indeed calling for his head.

Footnote: Today’s column was to have been a virtual tour of London’s original Billingsgate Fish Market. I fear that adventure will now have to await another day. I know many of you will be disappointed, but I took today’s full-colour panaroma of its fish-adorned facade, just to whet your appetites.