At almost exactly the same time as Dominic Cummings was taking his coronavirus-infected family on a road trip up country, my husband and I were struck down with the illness.
We have three children.
The absolute last thing I considered was piling them in the car and dumping them on grandparents, aunties or uncles. We simply stayed indoors.
Firstly, because for a few days I couldn’t get myself as far as the back door (let alone 260 miles up the A1 to Durham).
Secondly, because everything we’d been told was kids could carry the virus wherever they went and I’d be devastated if they infected one of the family.
Thirdly, because by simply leaving the house we would be risking infecting others – risking killing others.
And fourthly BECAUSE WE HAD BEEN TOLD TO.
So we did what all good parents do in a crisis – put the telly on. By the end of it my 10-year-old’s eyes weren’t just square, they were in HD!
But listening to Boris Johnson’s inane babblings at yesterday’s press conference it turns out that despite my best efforts I’d got it all wrong... What I should have done was followed the “instincts of every parent” and shipped out back to my parents’ place.
There was me thinking I was helping contain the virus when actually I should have been “acting with integrity” like Cummings and scattered Covid-19 particles to the four winds.
But there is no doubt: the rule then was if anyone in your household showed symptoms you should stay indoors for 14 days. Everyone else was allowed out just for exercise, essential work and food shopping.
The vast, vast, vast majority of law-abiding, decent people in this country have done what we were told. And we did it because we believed we were part of a national effort to repel this virus from our shores.
You remember what people were saying back then: “Our grandparents’ generation fought on the beaches, all we have to do is stay indoors.”
We were all doing “our bit”.
Except, now it transpires we weren’t all doing it. The Prime Minister’s chief ally and guide – the man he trusts above all others – wasn’t “fighting the virus”. Like some kind of corona fifth columnist he was transporting it 260 miles to a new northern front. And according to Johnson that’s absolutely fine.
Even though after self-isolation he went off on a birthday jaunt with his wife to Barnard Castle – 30 miles from where he was staying – when the rules still stated only essential travel.
Our intensive care units were filling up, nurses, doctors and carers were being killed, unable to hold a loved one’s hand.
And 13-year-old Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab died alone and was buried alone.
No mum by his side as he left this world because she was following the rules. More than 36,000 have now died. The sacrifices of some families have been enormous.
And yet the very man closest to our Prime Minister didn’t believe any of it applied to him. His moral compass must have rusted from the inside out.
Yet what makes me incandescent is the response of Johnson and those Cabinet ministers who have rewritten the lockdown rules to save their Svengali’s’ skin.
What is unforgiveable is them lying about what has happened; lying that the Cummings family hadn’t been contacted by police when they had. Because decent, law-abiding people don’t do that. Crooks and chancers and charlatans do that.
Even worse than the lying is changing the “rules” on lockdown to excuse Cummings. Because that could – probably will – cost lives.
Effectively in the last couple of days they’ve told the public that it’s fine to drop our kids wherever we might wish if we’re finding childcare a bit exhausting – even if we have Covid-19.
And they’ve roused a national mood of “They’re not following the rules, why should I?”
Privately educated Cummings (married to the daughter of a Baronet who lives in a castle) built his reputation on the idea he understood “normal British people” better than a liberal elite. It was rubbish then and it is rubbish now.
Normal British people in this situation would stick their son in front of the telly and feed him oven chips, even if they had to crawl to the cooker to do it.
Normal British people are sickened by what Cummings did and Johnson has defended.
Normal British people believe in the rules.
We believe in the police. We believe in doing our bit to help and protect each other.
We believe the truth matters.
Cummings and Johnson know nothing of us. They sneer at us. At what we are, and what
we believe in. And this rather sad situation proves it all.
