Cummings has certainly shown a disregard for the spirit of the lockdown, but in justifying his actions has he shown a disregard for the British public as well?
Last Monday, the nation’s attention moved to the press conference taking place in the 10-downing street garden. The beautiful setting perhaps deserved a more uplifting set of circumstances but astonishingly, on the same grass that presidents and prime ministers alike have delivered press conferences, stood the unelected Dominic Cummings.
Even for a man who has based a career on breaking political conventions, this address was unprecedented. Cummings attempted to justify driving to Durham in the midst of a national lockdown, hoping to gain favour in the court of public opinion, but instead gave an alarming insight into how he regards his fellow man.
Dominic Cummings has now admitted repeatedly breaking the lockdown rules.
Of course, he thinks he has an excuse – that those rules didn’t really apply to him – but we absolutely do not agree.
Please RT if you don’t either. pic.twitter.com/Wk9awa1ZbQ
— NHS Million ? (@NHSMillion) May 25, 2020
The policies devised by Cummings and the government were a blunt tool with the intention of portraying a clear, black and white message that was easy to follow, although perhaps not logical in some individual cases. Knowing this, Cummings chose to follow his rationale rather than the Government guidelines he himself helped to write and now finds himself in an uncomfortable position.
This erroneous sense of intellectual superiority that led Cummings to think he could mastermind a ‘Great Escape’
By suggesting that he understood a bigger picture than the simplified rules he gave to the country, he implies that he can navigate complex circumstances while the public need simpler instructions. Perhaps it is this erroneous sense of intellectual superiority that led Cummings to think he could mastermind a ‘Great Escape’ in the Downing Street garden, when as with the trip to Durham, a wiser man would have just stayed at home.
Now it seems that the anti-establishment sentiment, which Cummings harnessed so successfully during the Brexit campaign, has turned on its master and his head may join Corbyn and Dave’s on the mantelpiece of a Durham cottage with the caption ‘Careers I Have Ruined’.
Harold Dakin
Featured image courtesy of Number 10 via Flikr. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
In article image courtesy of @NHSMillion via Twitter. No changes were made to this image.
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Certainly destructive of a national sense of purpose and cohesion. I’m surprised this faction of Toryism has so willingly embraced the breakup of the EU -and- the UK, with regional factionalism hot on it’s heels.
That’s the thing about blame the ‘other’, it’s selfish and self-destructive.
Where is the political drive for cooperation and a sense of shared purpose and advantage going to come from?