Let me conduct a little thought experiment for a moment

Imagine Coronavirus had not happened, and instead the Daily Mirror / Guardian had dug up a different Cummings scandal - imagine he had allegedly bribed an EU official to get info on the Brexit negotiations

How would that one play out?

Johnson would stand by his man.

Cummings would defend his conduct - that it might not really have been in the spirit of negotiation, but he was doing it for the best for Britain.

Other politicians and commentators would weigh in, stating that Cummings was central to Brexit, the cheese eating surrender monkeys on the continent deserve what they are getting, that even if his behaviour was somewhat questionable, it was all in a good cause.

In short: it'd be framed as us-versus-them, the Brexiters-versus-Remainers or UK-versus-Europe.

The Sun, Daily Mail, Telegraph would back Cummings. The Guardian, Mirror would be the Remoaners / Liberal Elite.

But that is not how the current crisis is playing out.

In the Cummings scandal the Westminster players are still lined up for Brexiters-versus-Remainers, while the actual fight is people-versus-elite.

And people-versus-elite does not neatly match Brexiters-versus-Remainers.

This is why you then have devotees like Gove, or lackeys like Harwood and Grimes, defending Cummings to the hilt. It's defence of the Brexit herd.

They contradict themselves over and over - having in the case of Grimes or Harwood having called for the heads of Calderwood and Ferguson, or twisting Cummings's story in the case of Gove - but that doesn't matter.

That also explains why behaviour of previous Brexit herd members - people like Tim Montgomery or Iain Dale who switch to the people side re. Cummings - causes quite such grief, or even a feeling of betrayal among the enduring loyalists. How dare they!

To put it another way, to be able to empathise with someone who could not be at the funeral of their 90 year old grandmother is something that transcends Brexit.

To empathise with Cummings instead misses the public mood.

That even a majority of pro-Brexit voters are in favour of extending the Brexit transition period underlines this too - Coronavirus is (perhaps only for now, perhaps permanently) bigger than Brexit. More felt. More immediate. More real.

This is where Johnson and the UK Government are currently going monumentally wrong. They are fighting the wrong battle.

Sacking Cummings now might not be enough. The reputation that Johnson was on the side of the elite when the people needed him may never be shed.

Yet doing the opposite - keeping Cummings - would be more damaging still.

One might have thought that campaigning genius Cummings might have realised this.

Or maybe, just maybe, he is more like the rest of the political class he says he so despises, and lets his ego blind his judgment.

/ends