Dominic Cummings has accused Nicola Sturgeon of undermining a four-nation approach to tackling covid by “babbling” about discussions at Cobra meetings to deal with the pandemic.
Boris Johnson ’s former special adviser said that the meetings involving the devolved UK leaders in the Cobra national security meetings became a pretence because Sturgeon was beating Downing Street to the cameras with the decisions immediately afterwards.
In his evidence to MPs Cummings said that the online meetings in the Cobra briefing room became like “potemkin” facades with no real decision making because of Sturgeon.
He said: "As soon as you had these meetings Nicola Sturgeon would just go straight out announce what she wanted straight afterwards.
“So you had these completely Potemkin meetings without anyone actually digging into the reality in detail, because everybody thought as soon as the meeting is finish everyone’s going to just pop up on TV and start babbling.”
The accusation came ahead of a scheduled covid summit between the Prime Minister and the First Ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on Thursday.
Johnson has invited devolved leaders to a covid recovery summit, but that has now been thrown in doubt by complaint from Nicola Sturgeon and Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford that the agenda is not clear enough.
What do you make of Dominic Cummings' comments? Have your say in the comments section.
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