One big problem for @BorisJohnson is this. Dominic Cummings is the living breathing symbol of his government. And Cummings’s actions seem to say that the lockdown rules - which let’s not forget are still there, if mildly tweaked - are open to personal interpretation based...

on individual circumstance. This would have been a catastrophe for Johnson if the story had broken at the height of the epidemic. And it is still serious. To be clear, this is NOT a story about Cummings. It is not a story about whether it looks bad for him. It is a story about...

the sustainability of measures to suppress the virus, when one of the authors of the rules suggests by his actions that they can be over-ridden by personal judgement. The risk for Johnson is that by standing behind Cummings he is licensing the UK to view the isolation rules...

as guidance not imperatives. And that could imperil the strategy to reduce infection rates at a critical juncture.