Cummings' 'performance' in Downing Street yesterday was, I am sure, the product of hours of work. I think it's clear he broke the rules several times in his usual and arrogant rules-are-only-for-plebs style (and probably many more times that we don't know about). His press conference was then designed to explain away all the evidence in a plausible or acceptable way. A lot of commentators on Twitter point to the similarities between his prepared statement and those written by lawyers for witnesses in a trial.
Faced with solid evidence of wrong doing, this is what you do (apparently): think up something that makes sense and cannot be easily disproved. The trip to Barnard Castle, for example, was a clear breach of the rule to stay at home and self isolate. How can it be explained?
A bright young lawyer comes up with the idea of a test drive to see if you're fit and your eyesight is OK. Incredible isn't it? But that doesn't matter who can disprove it? But wait, you were seen walking along a river bank with your family, that's a big problem. How can that be explained?
Mmmmm.... You felt sick temporarily and had to get some fresh air so you parked up and stepped outside. What? Yes, that's what you did. But wouldn't I have waited next to the car and took a few deep breaths? Of course, but that doesn't matter nobody can gainsay it.
The whole story is based on this simple premise: better to look like a total idiot than appear guilty.
If your wife says she has been sick and you rush home you do not assume immediately that you are both going to get covid-19 become hospitalised and leave your child on the street. This is ridiculous. Neither Cummings or his wife had any coronavirus symptoms yet they rushed off to his parents house in Durham 270 miles away! This does not make sense.
I listened with incredulity to his statement and then with frustration as senior journalists like Laura KIuenssberg and Robert Peston lobbed soft-ball questions at him. Gary Gibbon of Channel 4 was much better, asking when the PM knew that Cummings had driven a coach and horses through the lockdown rules. We didn't find out but it was his most uncomfortable moment.
Some of the unknown newspaper journalists made a much better fist of it.
The statement raised a lot more questions and left them unanswered. This morning Tory MPs are still calling for his head. He is not out of the woods by any means.
On a side issue - during his statement he denied ever being behind the herd-immunity plan and said he had written about pandemic planning last year. Some smart cookie searched for it and found something on his blog. But they found that it wasn't true.
There are websites that keep track of changes and discovered that someone, presumably Cummings himself, had added a section to blogpost of his from 2019 but not until sometime between April and May this year:
There are websites that keep track of changes and discovered that someone, presumably Cummings himself, had added a section to blogpost of his from 2019 but not until sometime between April and May this year:
Cummings said he warned about i.a. corona virus in 2019.— ⬡ Jens Wiechers (@jwiechers) May 25, 2020
Thing is, he didn't. References to SARS and corona virus were added to his blog post on pandemic risks sometime between April and May of this year. pic.twitter.com/NneonooLoj
Cummings' time in Russia was obviously not wasted. He learned that re-writing history, especially your own and in the internet age is relatively easy. Unfortunately, the web makes it hard to keep secret.
What a nasty piece of work Cummings is. Let's hope by the end of the week he has been forced out. He has few friends and even cabinet ministers who appear to support him in public are doing it as if reading out a ransom note at gunpoint. Privately, I am sure they are putting Johnson under a lot of pressure.
