The awful genius of the presser is that it's turned it into a conversation about technicalities. There are no technicalities. People stayed at home when they had cancer, they stayed at home while their partners were beating them up, they stayed at home when their children died.

They stayed at home because they had been told that's what they had to do to stop the spread of the virus, to protect the NHS, to flatten the curve, and to save lives. Cummings knew better.

I don't care if he stopped for petrol, or if he went to Barnard Castle for a walk, or if he had a fucking foam party. When life got tough, the rest of us sucked it up to save lives. Cummings knew better.

That's the point here. Not the technicalities. Not the 'aha, gotchas!'. We stayed home when it was hard to save other people's lives. Cummings knew better. And that's not ok.

The joy of it, I should say, is that I don't think it'll work. This is JRM saying the people who died at Grenfell lacked common sense, only this time round there's millions of them, because 'they' are every single one of us who suffered because of lockdown, and sucked it up.

Cummings thinks he can drag this into a conversation about details, and that might be enough for some tribal hacks, but there are too many angry real people who've suffered too much. As ever, Cummings thinks he knows best. I think Cummings might have just made things worse.