Dominic Cummings to blame Boris Johnson for delaying winter lockdowns
Dominic Cummings is reportedly set to blame Boris Johnson for delaying the imposition of new lockdowns in the autumn and winter, leading to a massive surge in deaths.
The PM’s former chief adviser reportedly has an explosive dossier on the government’s Covid response that will name Johnson as the figure responsible for the UK’s high death toll on Boris.
Cummings is expected to use his Westminster committee hearing next month to reveal private conversations and decisions made by the Prime Minister that may have exacerbated the UK’s Covid death toll – one of the highest in the world.
Most devastatingly, the Mail reported that Johnson had said he would rather “let the bodies pile high in their thousands” than put in place a third lockdown, claims that Downing Street has categorically denied.
In addition, the Times reported that it was Johnson who rejected initial calls for a “circuit breaker” lockdown as case numbers began to rise in September.
A spokesperson for Labour said: “If this report is true, then these are truly shocking and sickening comments from Boris Johnson.It is hard to imagine how families who have lost loved ones to Covid will feel reading them. Boris Johnson must make a public statement as soon as possible.”
This morning’s revelations are the latest in an escalating briefing war between Cummings and his former employees.
On Saturday, Cummings tweeted that Johnson had been too slow to close the borders during the early stages of the coronavirus crisis and that this was “very important issue re learning from the disaster”.
Downing Street fears that the former Vote Leave chief has a tranche of documents he will unload on the committee to damage the Prime Minister.
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The Sunday Times reports that this may include voice recordings.
An ally of Cummings told The Times: “Dominic has copies of everything and knows where all the bodies are buried.
“He was pushing the prime minister hard to lock down sooner in the autumn and he has lots of evidence that shows that his decision to delay led to devastating consequences.”
A war erupted between Cummings and Johnson over the past few days, after the Prime Minister sought to blame his mercurial former aide on leaking personal text messages between him and Sir James Dyson.
The texts showed that the Prime Minister worked to give tax exemptions to Dyson’s staff in return for his company’s efforts in making ventilators for Covid treatment last March.
Cummings wrote a 1,000-word blog post on Friday that denied he was the source of the leak and hit back with a series of damning accusations against Johnson.
This included an explosive claim that the Prime Minister tried to block an inquiry of another leak last year because the expected perpetrator was Michael Gove aide Henry Newman – a close friend of Johnson’s fiancee Carrie Symonds.
Cummings also claimed that Johnson was in line to break the ministerial code of conduct if he got Tory donors to pay for the renovations of his Downing Street flat as he allegedly planned.
“I told him I thought his plans to have donors secretly pay for the renovation were unethical, foolish, possibly illegal and almost certainly broke the rules on proper disclosure of political donations,” Cummings said.
International trade secretary Liz Truss pointed out that Johnson had now paid the £58,000 for flat renovations, but refused to answer whether this was after soliciting donations for the works.
On the accusations about Newman, Truss said: “This is a complete load of Westminster tittle-tattle that people simply don’t care abut.
“The inquiry is ongoing, this is being looked into…as a government we’re focused on coming out of lockdown in the right way.”