Dominic Cummings must go if the prime minister is to retain the authority he needs

Dominic Cummings says he acted reasonably and legally in leaving his London home to travel the length of England with his wife, who had coronavirus symptoms, and his son. Now it emerges that he went to Durham again after returning to work in London.

If Mr Cummings and his wife were so confident that their actions were reasonable and would be seen as such, it is interesting that his wife, Mary Wakefield, does not mention this significant episode in her thousand-word account of their illness. It is just as telling that Mr Cummings and the prime minister’s office have stonewalled questions about his trip to Durham for several weeks.

The problem for Mr Cummings and for his boss, Boris Johnson, is that the policy they devised and the guidelines they drew up say, if any member of your household has symptoms of Covid-19, “do not leave your home for any reason”.

Any reasonable person would accept that such a bald instruction does not take into account a situation where two parents have symptoms and might need help with childcare. In that case, exceptional provision might have to be made. But it would be hard for a reasonable person to judge that this would involve two probably infected adults driving with their child 260 miles to take advantage of an offer of babysitting – which turned out not to be needed.

We do not know who they came into contact with either on the journey or once they got there: the statement from No 10 was notably unspecific on that point. As one journalist asked at yesterday’s daily press conference briefing, is it really plausible that there was no possible help available to the PM’s top aide if childcare or meals were needed and he had stayed in London?

It tells us something about Mr Cummings’s judgement – and that of the prime minister – that they thought this was a reasonable course of action for anyone, let alone someone responsible for drawing up the lockdown rules. Following the level of backing Mr Cummings has received from No 10 and cabinet ministers, the press and public will rightly want to push for answers and clarity over the rules in the days to come. Are we to conclude that the rules they have drawn up are for the little people, and not for them?

This episode is about the moral authority of the prime minister and his government. The lockdown regime asks that we all forgo our liberties for the sake of the common good. It requires the consent of the people to work. It cannot be enforced by the police unless there is a high degree of voluntary self-enforcement. Public support for these exceptional measures will be undermined if people think that there is one rule for the prime minister’s cronies and another rule for them.

Mr Johnson faces many difficult decisions over the next few months as he seeks to lead the country out of lockdown and back to some kind of normal life. He cannot do that effectively while his authority is mocked by the continued presence of his chief adviser. His own conduct, breaking the distancing guidelines before his bout of Covid-19, was irresponsible enough.

As for Mr Cummings, he has made his political reputation by proving time and again that he can read the national mood and predict exactly the reactions of his support base. At the core of this issue is a situation that many families have faced. At the time he (first) drove to Durham, he says that only his wife was showing symptoms, but that he feared he would soon develop Covid-19. Will people sympathise with a family reacting to illness? Or will they feel that this is a man who feels he and his family are outside the rules that apply to the rest of us – after all, there is nothing unique in recent weeks about a family with one parent showing signs of coronavirus; not everyone thought it was acceptable to drive across the country.

Both he and Mr Johnson may have hoped that sympathy for a parent would win the argument over allegations of hypocrisy. (Note the pictures yesterday of Mr Cummings outside his London home, child’s bike and ball in hand. Is anything we see pure coincidence these days?) But now further sightings have been reported of Mr Cummings in and around Durham during his supposed isolation and after his supposed return to work in London.

If these new witnesses are right, it will confirm that Mr Cummings was still not telling the whole story in the statement issued by 10 Downing Street on his behalf on Saturday. It is so often the cover-up as much as the original offence that does the real damage.

Mr Johnson should see that it is not just in the national interest, but in his own interest and even in Mr Cummings’s own interest that this maverick adviser should take a long sabbatical from government. That would be the fastest way for the government to move on. If Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College epidemiologist whose advice had been deemed crucial, was seen as expendable after he broke lockdown rules, it seems reasonable that the nation could cope without Mr Cummings’s input. Which bold adviser will be the one to break that news?