Usually, "SpAds" stay in the shadows. These special advisors, special advisers to the British government, step aside. At worst, when things go wrong, they quit. They never speak in public: further proof of the exceptional role played by Dominic Cummings with Boris Johnson. On Monday May 25, he even held a press conference in the Garden of Honor on Downing Street, in an attempt to put out the fire started three days earlier by the Guardian and the Daily Mirror and justify his departure more than 400 km north of London with wife and child at the end of March, when the rules of confinement were very clear: stay at home ("Stay at home").
" Two weights, two measures "
The previous evening, the Prime Minister had personally stepped in to defend him, explaining that Mr. Cummings had " obeyed his father's instinct " and acted "Responsibly, legally and with integrity". A communication operation completely missed: Monday morning, anger overflowed on social networks and television sets. A government scientific adviser (Stephen Reicher, sociologist at Saint Andrews University), a dozen bishops (from Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Reading, etc.), and above all twenty Conservative deputies denounced the " Two weights, two measures " and behavior seriously weakening the credibility of power in the midst of a historic health crisis.
Many dates, lots of personal details – his feverish 4-year-old son, rushed to hospital in early April, his dead uncle, his concerns for his wife, a patient with Covid-19, himself reached a few days later … – for more than an hour Dom Cummings, 48, delivered his version of the facts, assuring that he had "Acted reasonably", without breaking the rules of confinement by isolating herself in late March in Durham (north-east of England) in a cottage near the home of her elderly parents.
" I regret nothing "
No apologies for the architect of the successful 2016 leave campaign, the architect of Boris Johnson's Brexit strategy, who "Don't regret anything" and conceded only one or two errors. "Didn't ask permission" Prime Minister to leave London in late March "But he was sick, he had so many other important things to deal with". And not having made public his displacement earlier. But Mr. Cummings feared "The media that regularly report incorrect things" on him. "I did not think of resigning, I did not offer to resign to the Prime Minister", said Mr. Cummings, known for his brittle manners and his open contempt for "Elites", especially journalists.
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