Boris Johnson will pay a price for standing by Cummings

There are rulemakers and rule takers and no one doubts in which category Dominic Cummings sees himself.

As Downing Street fights to save the UK Prime Minister’s chief strategist, it is this notion of one law for the powerful that will prove the most corrosive.

Boris Johnson knows this, which is why he insists that Cummings breached neither the law nor the spirit of the lockdown by driving from London to his family in Durham when his wife fell ill with coronavirus.

But while he offered full support to his aide, he was notably sparing with detailed answers to the difficult questions.

The Prime Minister has taken a big bet on his adviser, but we should not be surprised. Few Downing Street aides have been more important than Cummings. The architect of the Brexit and general election victories has become a talismanic figure for his boss.

And yet while he will see standing by his ally as a sign of strength, it is in fact a sign of his weakness, of the extent to which the Prime Minister has come to rely on Cummings.

He has not only signed up to his aide’s blueprint for ­government, but has placed him at the very centre of the operation. His loss would leave an enormous hole at the heart of the Downing Street machine.

Johnson cannot be forced to sack him. He will go only if the Prime Minister decides that he is more of a liability than an asset.

The only levers of pressure are within the Conservative party. Cummings has made few friends among MPs and many among them will be happy to see this lofty aide brought down to earth – but thus far the discontent looks short of a full revolt.

Cummings argues that his actions were justified by the need to ensure childcare for his four-year-old son should he also fall ill and Mr Johnson feels that there is enough wriggle room in the lockdown guidelines to allow him to argue the case. This is why the stories of his being seen in nearby towns are much more damaging if they can be fully confirmed.

But there are legal breaches and moral breaches and Cummings is on shakier ground with the second, which is why the Downing Street strategy is risky.

Rather than claim to have committed no offence, Cummings could have shown some humility, and pleaded the concern for his child and apologised. Johnson could then have let him off with a rebuke.

This approach would not have satisfied his enemies but it would possibly have satisfied a public need not to be taken for idiots.

But this macho Downing Street operation has always preferred defiance. The result is that it is left defending a position that the aide has done nothing wrong; it is an argument that simply won’t wash.

When Cummings disappeared from view prior to falling ill with coronavirus, Downing Street was oddly evasive about his condition and his where­abouts.

It all begs one question: if he did nothing wrong, why did all sides work so hard to conceal what he did? The Spectator article by his wife Mary Wakefield about the period of illness makes no reference to the dash up to Durham and Downing Street would say only that he was “in contact”.

Johnson has now put himself on the line for Cummings, gambling that no new details undermine his aide’s case and that the furore will peter out as the public focuses on bigger issues around coronavirus. It may work out in the short term.

But this is the kind of issue that cuts through to voters and what screams out in this case is the indifference to both the rules and the opinions of ­others. The impression created is of one rule for the rich and well-connected allies of the prime minister and one for everyone else. That will erode support for the lockdown and for the government.

It all speaks to a long-held view of the arrogance of Westminster — a fire this government worked hard to fan. Those who obeyed the lockdown rules to the letter will feel an anger they will not forget.

There will be a price to be paid; if not now, then later. But it will be paid.

Financial Times