Boris Johnson failed his latest test in front of the public – but Dominic Cummings will be pleased

This was Boris Johnson’s chance to show that he was in charge, and he found several ways to fail the test. He started by saying he understood why people were angry about the behaviour of his adviser, whom he didn’t name as if he were ashamed of him. His explanation was that the government had asked people to do a lot of “tough things”, such as “separating people from their families”.

Precisely, prime minister. Other people had been asked to keep away from their families while Dominic Cummings bolted to be near to his. “I understand why people are so concerned,” Johnson went on, proving how little he understood.

“We need to move on,” he said, for the first of about eight or 10 times. Presumably that is a line that gets people nodding in focus groups – the only line that gets any traction at all against the blast of anger about what 71 per cent of the nation sees as double standards.

So the committee moved on to its first member, Pete Wishart, the Scottish National Party MP who tried, as Johnson said, to score “party political points”. The trouble, from Johnson’s point of view, is that he did it well, asking why the prime minister was prepared to “sacrifice the popularity of your government to stand by your man”.

It was a rhetorical question, but a good one. The prime minister was there to assert his authority, but by defending a mere adviser he gave the impression that he is the puppet of the true power in the land, the nameless Cummings.

It didn’t get any better for Johnson. Had he seen the evidence that exonerated his adviser, asked Meg Hillier, the Labour chair of the Public Accounts Committee. He tried not to answer but somehow, by interrupting him with well-timed persistence, she forced him to say yes. Would he share it with the cabinet secretary, she asked. “It is not doing my job to shuffle this problem into the hands of officials,” he blustered.

They are doing important stuff, dealing with the coronavirus crisis, he said, leaving yet another sentence unfinished, so that the viewers could finish it for him: “... whereas I am a mere shell of a prime minister, wandering around No 10 trying not to get in the way”.

So the feebleness went on. Bernard Jenkin, the Liaison Committee chair, levered into that position by the prime minister in the hope that he would have an easier time of his interrogation, told him off for repeating himself. “What can I do,” pleaded Johnson, “if I am asked the same question?”

Gradually, he managed to assert himself a little. He had important announcements to make. And he had an effective line when he said that if the British people “hear nothing but politicians squabbling it’s no wonder they find it confusing”, although even that sounded a little like a complaint that it was unfair to ask him hostile questions in the middle of a national emergency.

Then he was trapped on detail by the mild-mannered Clark Kent of the committee, Greg Clark, the former business secretary, who asked why the scientists had advised us to keep 2 metres apart when a lot of countries advise 1 or 1.5 metres. Johnson was fine on the glib first answer – because the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) advised that there was a “considerable reduction in risk” at 2 metres. But had he challenged them on why their advice is different from that in other countries, Clark persisted. “I can’t…” Johnson said, falling back weakly on: “We rely on the guidance we get from our advisers.”

Then came the triumph of Johnson’s attempt to show the nation who was in charge. The trouble with these committee hearings, he said at the end, trying to wriggle out of promising when he would next subject himself to one, is “it does take a huge amount of sherpa time, of preparation time”. So he had spent a “huge amount” of time preparing for this session, and when Jeremy Hunt, his leadership rival and former health secretary, asked him to set a deadline for getting test results returned within 24 hours, he refused to do so: “I have been forbidden from announcing any more targets.”

He gave the impression that he had been shouted at by Cummings, or Matt Hancock, or a No 10 cleaner, for making up targets on the spur of the moment, which hardly inspires confidence in his handling of the crisis so far.

If, in all that “sherpa time”, his advisers had told him he had to go out and persuade the nation that it was absurd to think that he was defending Cummings because he couldn’t function without him, he did a good job of achieving the opposite effect.

He came across as a politician who didn’t understand people’s anger about Cummings’s Durham trip; who was prepared to put keeping his adviser above the national interest; who didn’t like being asked hard questions; and who had been “forbidden” by a nameless power behind the throne not to make any promises. All in all, a good day’s work.