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A thread on what puzzles me most about the Cummings affair. It isn't that that wagons have circled round him, but that by not apologising he has made things so much worse. It wasn't the road trip that caused the Govt to rip holes in its COVID strategy, and credibility. 1/15
He could have said: sorry, wrong call at time of extreme stress. Thought it wasn't not against letter of law/regulations but can see people would think so and with hindsight better I'd not done it. Have apologised to PM for putting him in difficult situation. 2/15
Then PM and cabinet could say: DC did wrong thing but forgivable. Different to Ferguson/Calderwood because about protecting family, not pleasure/leisure, so shouldn't resign. But our clear message to public remains: if you've got symptoms stay home. 3/15
Wouldn't be watertight and (given his bogeyman status), would still have been calls for him to go and he may not have survived. But defending DC wouldn't be at the expense of the public health message, or the self-respect of half the cabinet. 4/15
PM would have had some tricky questions about when he knew - but he was seriously ill at the time, it was at a crisis point in handling the pandemic so a plausible defence could be made. Again not watertight but not one that relies on doublethink. 5/15
Instead the refusal to apologise has increased pressure on DC, caused polls to collapse, alienated at least half the parliamentary party, infuriated the public, made Ministers compromise themselves (AttGen in particular), made it look like PM not in charge, and worse... 6/15
it has not only compromised existing CV strategy, it appears to have forced decisions on easing lockdown that don't seem to be supported by the evidence and that may end up retarding recovery, and undermined the already rushed introduction of test and trace. 7/15
And why has all this happened? Not because DC went to Durham or took his family out for a day in Barnard Castle; not because DC is so central to the Government (and so totemic for those against Government, Brexit etc); but because he won't eat humble pie and apologise. 8/15
So defending him causes huge and wholly unnecessary collateral damage. Perhaps understandable that he tried first to kill it by making it a bubble issue. And embarrassing to admit to admitting the plan wasn't working even when by Monday it was obviously not. 9/15
But was nobody in No 10 able to say: its time to cut our losses and try to protect you without bringing everything else down around us? Too late now but it was just possible on Monday even after PM's Sunday press conference didn't solve things. 10/15
The canon explanation (among critics at least) is that a powerful adviser has tied a weak principal, who perhaps didn't focus on the issue quickly enough, to a strategy forged in anger from which it is now too late to row back. This is probably right but perhaps...11/15
...it wasn't that nobody could overrule DC, but that it was agreed strategy. That the long game is now won US culture wars style by making what should be a discrete moral/legal judgement about whether he did the right thing a performative gesture of political commitment. 12/15
I'd rather the first explanation were true - the cynicism of the second is too awful. The fact that the Govt is trying so hard to get DC off the front page, possibly by taking huge risks with public health, would support the first explanation, and... 13/15
the fact that much of the public and many MPs aren't letting political affiliation determine their view is reassuring (NB not saying that thinking DC is in the right is always political gesture, or that he is in the wrong is result of careful judgement...). 14/15
But either way, price of refusing to apologise is going to carry a cost much higher than lost political capital. It sounds melodramatic, but it is true: lives have been put at stake to protect DC's ego, not his position in Government. Can it possibly be worth it? 15/15
A post script: not really sure why I wrote this, or whether anyone will read it. I don't think it says much that hasn't been said hundreds of times before. But it feels very cathartic.
