Top story: Johnson unfit to be PM, ex-adviser says
Good morning readers, Warren Murray here. Now, where to start …
Matt Hancock is expected to be confronted with allegations made by Dominic Cummings when the health secretary answers an urgent question from the shadow health secretary, Jon Ashworth, in the House of Commons today and later presents a Downing Street press conference. Cummings claimed in a seven-hour hearing before MPs in Westminster that Boris Johnson is unfit to be prime minister after presiding over a chaotic and incompetent pandemic response that caused “tens of thousands” of unnecessary deaths. As well as Johnson, Cummings heaped blame on Hancock, claiming the latter lied repeatedly to colleagues but Johnson refused to sack him. A spokesperson for Hancock said: “We absolutely reject Mr Cummings’ claims about the health secretary.”
“The truth is that senior ministers, senior officials, senior advisers like me fell disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its government in a crisis like this,” Cummings said. He said he heard Johnson say he would rather see “bodies pile high” than impose a third lockdown – something the prime minister has denied in the House of Commons. Our political team have fact-checked some of his statements – while Cummings is viewed as bitter about his treatment at the hands of his former boss, he is also one of the first key figures from inside No 10 at the height of the pandemic to give public evidence.
Addressing perhaps the greatest source of his notoriety, Cummings admitted he did not tell the whole truth over his lockdown journeys to Durham, failing to disclose fully a plan to move his family out of London for security reasons, with Johnson’s agreement. “The prime minister got that wrong. I got that wrong … I know that my misjudgement on it caused huge trouble. And I deeply apologise for it.” Cummings suggested claims of a second trip by him were false, but “it is true that I moved my wife and child back out of London despite the Covid rules, but that was in discussion with the police. I did not leave London and all of these stories about me being elsewhere and me going off or whatever, those stories are all categorically false, but it is true that I’ve moved my family again.”
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‘Specific questions for China’ – Joe Biden has ordered US intelligence to dig deeper into the origins of coronavirus, posing “specific questions for China” and seeking a “definitive conclusion” on how the virus was first transmitted in humans. The request included asking intelligence to explore whether it could have come from a Chinese laboratory, after the Wall Street Journal broke the news of a previously undisclosed US intelligence report about three Wuhan researchers being hospitalised with coronavirus-like symptoms in November 2019. German scientists, meanwhile, say they may have discovered why, in very rare cases, people who have received the AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson vaccines develop blood clots, and are willing to help the manufacturers fix the problem. In the UK, a year-long study by the Fabian Society has reported back that there is widespread public backing for permanently retaining the £20-a-week boost to universal credit as part of more generous social security benefits for disabled people, carers and young adults.
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Hillsborough trial collapses – Bereaved Hillsborough disaster families have condemned as “ludicrous” the decision to acquit two former South Yorkshire police officers and the force’s former solicitor on charges of perverting the course of justice. The three had been accused of changing 68 officers’ statements but the trial judge, Mr Justice William Davis, ruled there was no legal case to answer. The altered police statements were prepared for an inquiry into the disaster that was not a statutory inquiry taking evidence on oath, but an “administrative exercise” and not a “course of public justice” that could be perverted. Speaking outside court, Deanna Matthews, the niece of victim Brian Matthews, said the law was “not fit for purpose” and needed to change. The only conviction over the 1989 disaster has been against Graham Mackrell, then secretary of Sheffield Wednesday, who was found guilty of a single safety offence and fined £6,500.
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Paid court interns to address diversity gap – The supreme court has announced its first paid internships for aspiring lawyers from underrepresented communities. The programme will offer a five-day placement to eight candidates who have either completed or accepted an offer to take the bar professional training course. The initiative is in collaboration with the charity Bridging the Bar. At present all 12 supreme court justices are white and only two are women, while across the judiciary in England and Wales, the proportion of black, Asian and minority ethnic court judges was 8% as of 1 April, with 4% in senior posts (high court and above). For women, the respective figures were 32% and 26%. According to the 2011 census, 14% of the population were BAME and 51% were female.
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Scouts struggle to pitch back up – The Scouts movement has lost more volunteers and youth members in the last year than at any time since the outbreak of the second world war. Many adults who lost jobs or had to change jobs during the pandemic were no longer able to help. The number of children wanting to take part has bounced back more strongly than volunteers, and it has left some troops of the 113-year-old movement having to turn away members. The slump has prompted the Scouts to send out dozens of community organisers to recruit new volunteers.
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You say banana … Monkeys will use the “accent” of another species when they enter its territory to enhance communication, much like a British person living in the US might forgo their “tomahto” for “tomayto”, researchers have found. Researchers investigated the behaviour of 15 groups of two Brazilian Amazon species, pied tamarins and red-handed tamarins.
The two species practically speak the same language of “calls” but need to understand each other’s accents, said Dr Jacob Dunn, an evolutionary biologist at Anglia Ruskin University. “You need a call that can be understood by this other species so that you can regulate territorial disputes.”
Today in Focus podcast: Dominic Cummings vents
Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff tells Anushka Asthana this was the first chance to get a detailed firsthand account of what was going on in the heart of government as the Covid crisis unfolded. But how much should Cummings himself be seen as culpable for the failures?
Lunchtime read: Folly of Cumbrian coal dream
Supporters of a new coalmine have argued that it will reduce global warming and create green jobs. How could such absurd claims have gained any credibility, asks Rebecca Willis.
Sport
Ole Gunnar Solskjær declared Manchester United’s season was unsuccessful after his team “didn’t turn up” for their Europa League final against Villarreal. United lost 11-10 in an epic penalty shootout in Gdansk and remain a team, writes Jonathan Liew, who so often lose the big matches. Following the game, United striker Marcus Rashford reported he was subjected to more racial abuse on his social media accounts. Naomi Osaka has said she will not take questions from the press at this year’s French Open, saying the nature of news conferences puts an unfair burden on players’ mental health.
Zinedine Zidane has decided to leave Real Madrid with immediate effect, bringing to an end his second stint as manager at the Spanish club, while Antonio Conte has left his job as manager of Internazionale, three and a half weeks after leading the club to their first Serie A title in 11 years. Simon Yates reignited the Giro d’Italia as his late attack found the first signs of weakness in race leader Egan Bernal, while Dan Martin took solo victory from a breakaway on stage 17. And Haseeb Hameed and the uncapped Sam Billings have been called up to England’s Test squad for the upcoming series against New Zealand after Ben Foakes tore his hamstring when slipping on the dressing room floor.
Business
Kate Nicholls, the chief executive of UK Hospitality, has warned that despite customers returning to restaurants, pubs and cafes, the last month has been “far from a champagne moment” after the cumulative damage of repeated closures. The Guardian’s Covid economic tracking shows that in the past month, the number of people eating out in restaurants has risen to 75% above comparable levels two years ago, and public transport usage reached its highest since Covid first hit Britain in 2020. The reopening of non-essential shops in April helped drive retail sales to more than 10% above pre-pandemic levels, while business surveys reveal the fastest monthly growth in private sector activity since the late 1990s. Unemployment fell for a third month running in March, but more than 4m jobs remained furloughed.
In market news, Asia-Pacific shares have fallen as investors watch for signs of inflation and await US economic data expected later in the day. The Chinese mobile phone maker Xiaomi rose 4% after it confirmed the US had removed it from a blacklist for Chinese tech companies. Trades in FTSE futures suggest London will open a few points higher this morning while the pound is worth $1.411 and €1.157 at time of writing.
The papers
As you might expect we have a separate roundup of the papers today – a summary follows. The Guardian leads with Cummings’ devastating accusation that “tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die” during the Covid outbreak in Britain, above a triptych of faces the ousted aide made during the hearing. The Guardian also carried analysis by political editor Heather Stewart calling the hearing self-serving but plausible. “Chaos and complacency”, writes the i, calling the evidence “devastating”. The front page quotes a senior official as saying, “We’re f***ked” – a reference to what Cummings alleges deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara said in March 2020.
The Mirror’s headline appears over a photo of the PM with his head hanging: “Johnson’s shame: Tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die”. The Times says “Cummings rains fire on No 10”. The Daily Mail and Metro are peerless in the pun department, with “Domshell”. The Financial Times has “Cummings accuses Johnson of being unfit to lead the country”.
The Telegraph takes a different tack, labelling the accusations from Cummings as “revenge”. The Daily Express calls Cummings’ performance a “tirade”, with the headline: “Yes, mistakes were made but this was pure revenge”. And the Sun takes the prime minister’s corner as well, mocking up its headline as an optometrist’s chart that says in ever-decreasing point size: “Do you need a hindsight test, Mr Cummings?” The paper reports a backlash against Cummings, saying: “Last night a former colleague branded him a ‘disingenuous little f*****’”.
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