In defending Dominic Cummings the prime minister has shown scant regard for the public

It is difficult to believe how Boris Johnson, who not long ago won a thumping majority at the general election, could have become so detached from public opinion over the disgracefully hypocritical behaviour of his most senior adviser.

Whatever else may be said about him, Dominic Cummings did not, as Boris Johnson claimed so unconvincingly, behave “responsibly, legally and with integrity”. Integrity? When no one even wants to admit the whole truth about the Cummings family’s coronavirus lockdown trip to Durham?

This tactic of doubling down may be the last line of defence for Mr Johnson, if he feels Mr Cummings is indispensable, but it seems unlikely to put an end to the matter. There are far too many questions unanswered, both of fact and morality, and they will distract the government in the coming crucial days.

For a populist prime minister at the head of a self-styled “people’s government” Mr Johnson seems not to comprehend the degree of real anger among many families in similar circumstances to Mr Cummings. They feel that they have followed the rules, while Mr Cummings was allowed to follow his instincts instead.

There is an unfairness there that can’t be argued away, no matter how hard you try and how sympathetic you try to sound. There even were moments in his press conference when the prime minister took on a Trumpian aspect to fudge questions. It won’t work. It doesn’t deserve to work.

For what is the real damage that is being done here? It is to public health. No doubt the prime minister and his government can look after themselves (in every sense), and no one outside of their immediate circle will be very surprised or upset if Mr Cummings eventually quits. That doesn’t matter much in itself. What is happening now is the unforgivable undermining of the fight against Covid-19 – with all the human suffering that entails.

Messages, already muddled by a botched comms strategy, are being rendered irrelevant when the man who invents the slogans makes a mockery of them.

People are rightly asking if they too can interpret the rules on isolation and social distancing to their own satisfaction, exercising their “instincts”, their “common sense” and a previously unnoticed childcare exemption whenever it suits them. Because he was pushed into such a tight corner, Mr Johnson had to effectively rewrite the government’s original unequivocal guidance to stay home, protect the NHS and save lives.

Hard-pressed families wonder whether they too can now relocate their place of isolation to be closer to relatives, or childcare, or just to enjoy the countryside. As social distancing and self-isolation declines, as public patience and compliance with the rules erodes, so will the number of infections and the rate of reproduction of the virus increase. Lives will thus be lost, a rather more material consideration than the career of a here today, gone tomorrow adviser.

Though it is unfashionable to mention them, Mr Cummings must possess some talents as a political campaigner, as we witnessed in the Brexit referendum and the general election last December. However, he seems ill-suited to much else, which is how he lost the last job he had in government, as special adviser to Michael Gove at the Department for Education.

The then prime minister, David Cameron, insisted on Mr Cummings departure back in 2014, and is said to have labelled him a “career psychopath”. Now Mr Cummings is a bigger liability than ever. They’re better off without him.

Ministers, and especially the prime minister, have far more important things to do than to worry about the wayward Mr Cummings. Meanwhile his party and the country more widely will be wondering about the quality of the prime minister’s judgement, and why he apparently relies so much on Mr Cummings that he cannot function without him.