If Boris Johnson's environment thought he had weathered the Dominic Cummings storm, the former star adviser to the prime minister and Brexit ideologue has shown on Wednesday that he still has enough ammunition to cause more damage. At the end of May, Cummings appeared before a parliamentary commission to reveal the disastrous management of Downing Street during the first months of the pandemic. The most powerful man in the Johnson administration early in the term had ended up walking out the back door, defeated by his internal enemies, and left to fend for himself. Johnson's current wife, Carrie Symonds, successfully led a revolt against the despotic ways of the advisor. Cummings calmly prepared his revenge,and left the deputies speechless when describing a prime minister who refused to admit the seriousness of the threat, and above all, a sneaky and incompetent Minister of Health (Matt Hancock), “a liar who should have been fired by now at least in 15 or 20 times ”.
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The successful vaccination campaign in the United Kingdom, which has already immunized 57% per cent of the population with double doses, and the prospect of light at the end of the tunnel, played in favor of Hancock, who managed to defend himself against the accusations with half excuses and a semblance of honesty in their mistakes.
Which basically consisted of two: the inability to implement a test system for locating and tracking contagions during the first months of the pandemic, and the tragic decision to forward to residences the elderly diagnosed with covid-19 in the hospitals.
Cummings published wasap exchanges with Johnson on Wednesday in which it is clear that the prime minister had been warned, and was aware, of the failings of his health minister. “Tens of thousands of health workers will not be able to go to work in the next three weeks, which will be critical. This added to my insistence that the tests are an essential route of the escape plan ”, the advisor warns Johnson, in a message in which he points out how the head of Government Health has been unable to carry out the objectives. “
Totally fucking hopeless.
Absolutely useless fucking
,
”
responds a desperate Johnson
.
86 / Evidence on the covid disaster: as the PM said himself, Hancock's performance on testing, procurement, PPE, care homes etc was 'totally fucking hopeless', & his account to MPs was fiction: https://t.co/lur4Ddrddy pic.twitter.com/JVGLCSov7v
- Dominic Cummings (@ Dominic2306) June 16, 2021
All members of the Government, starting with Johnson himself, have effusively defended Hancock to try to weather the storm. At the same time, the Downing Street communication team has dedicated itself to denigrating in the media a character who already provokes a notable rejection by himself for his surly, eccentric and arrogant character. His appearance to justify a trip to the countryside, along with his wife and son, in the middle of the first wave of covid-19, only managed to further irritate public opinion. He resisted something as simple as apologizing. “And Hancock currently maintains direct responsibility for such sensitive issues as new variants [of the virus] or the management of residences. Keeping such a minister in a key position of responsibility is a guarantee of disaster. To defend public safety,it is urgent that he be removed, "Cummings wrote in
Substack
, an internet platform that allows the publication of
newsletters
and manages the payment of readers.
Dominic Cummings, a former adviser to Boris Johnson, uses his mobile phone after leaving Downing Street in 2019.TOLGA AKMEN / AFP
Hancock himself appeared before the same parliamentary committee and was defiant.
He denied all of Cummings' claims and challenged him to document everything he was accused of.
The commission itself demanded that the former advisor hand over the evidence corresponding to the serious accusations he had made.
Although he promised to do so, he has decided to be the one who manages the times of his revenge, with a new round of incriminating documents that he was in charge of announcing through his personal Twitter account.
