“Rewriting history”, “memory lapses”… Dominic Cummings keeps talking about the handling by the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and his Minister of Health, Matthew Hancock, of the Covid-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020.
In a long text published on Wednesday June 16 on the Substack platform, Mr Johnson’s ex-adviser accuses them, with supporting photos and screenshots, of having “Repeatedly lied about last year’s failures” and claims they are now trying to “Rewrite history”.
The former adviser notably publishes the screenshot of an exchange on WhatsApp messaging, dated March 27, 2020, with “Johnson Boris”. Mr. Cummings implicates “MH” for the delays in the ramping up of screening and his contact qualifies the Minister of “Fucking hopeless case”. “The management of tests, such as vaccines, has been withdrawn [du contrôle de M. Hancock] in May because of his incompetence and dishonesty ” over the past two months, Cummings recalls. The Prime Minister’s services made no comment.
Overwhelming requisition
Now at war with his former boss, the influential mastermind of the Brexit campaign in 2016 had violently attacked, at the end of May, during a parliamentary marathon hearing, the management of the Covid-19 crisis by the government . He had judged Mr Johnson “Unfit”, but above all had violently targeted the Minister of Health, accusing him of having “Lied” repeatedly and judging that it should have been ” fired “. The latter denied and Mr. Cummings has since been criticized for failing to provide any evidence for his claims.
Six months after his departure against the backdrop of internal struggles, Mr. Cummings, architect of Mr. Johnson’s brilliant victory in the legislative elections of December 2019, is ruthless towards the Prime Minister.
He also claims that a promised public inquiry into the Covid-19 crisis will not solve the problems. “It won’t start for years and elude the tough parts, until this Prime Minister is gone. Because, unlike the other prime ministers, he plans to leave after the next elections, he wants to earn money and have fun, not to “stay indefinitely” “, writes Mr. Cummings. ” Yes [M. Johnson] is ready to lie with such aplomb on key issues like those of last year, we can no longer trust him now neither on Covid-19 nor on any other national security issue ”, he concludes.
He believes that the government’s mismanagement has cost ” dozens of thousands “ lives in the United Kingdom, the European country most bereaved by the pandemic with more than 128,000 deaths.
