Though he had to drive to Barnard Castle at the height of the Covid crisis with his family in the car to “check his eyesight”, there is nothing wrong with Dominic Cummings’ hindsight.
Pushed out of Downing Street on the losing side of a power struggle with the Prime Minister’s wife, Cummings has decided to go the full-Sampson and try to bring Boris Johnson’s temple down with him.
With perfect recall, and supporting WhatsApp messages, Cummings has revealed what a viper’s nest Downing Street is under Johnson.
The Prime Minister apparently derides his Health Secretary as “totally ****ing hopeless” as the Covid crisis unfolds last year.
He considers replacing him with Michael Gove, which will be “worse” his senior adviser tells him, and ends up ploughing on with Hancock despite failures on PPE, on care home discharges and on being straight with the public.
There is no doubt that any government would have been knocked off balance by the scale of the Covid disaster but Johnson’s Tories, with their profit before patients philosophy and deluded libertarian streak added to the chaos.
Letting a political berserker like Cummings over the threshold of Downing Street was Johnson’s original sin.
Keeping Hancock despite his failures is the ultimate cynical move.
The Health Secretary will be fed to the pursuing wolves of truth when the time is right to save the Prime Minister’s skin.
Answers at last
At long last, a Fatal Accident Inquiry has been announced into what happened the night Cameron House burned down.
The blaze at the luxury hotel on the shores of Loch Lomond left two young men dead.
Jane Midgely lost her son Simon in the tragedy and refused to accept the Crown Office’s initial judgement that an FAI was not required.
It’s to her immense credit that she kept fighting and law officers have finally agreed following an independent review.
There are clearly unanswered questions surrounding the events and the public has a right to know what lessons must be learned.
The owners of the hotel have already admitted responsibility for not taking necessary precautions when it came to fire safety.
But an FAI will offer the chance for wider recommendations to be made regarding the hospitality sector.
And will hopefully provide answers to the victims’ families.
