Public will never forget Boris Johnson's betrayal in Dominic Cumming lockdown row

Record View says there cannot be one rule for them and one rule for the rest of us

Who’s going to listen to Boris Johnson now?

In his rush to save a deeply controversial political adviser, he has holed any trust he might have had far below the water line.

It cannot be one rule for them and one rule for the rest of us.

That was the cry from Conservatives when lockdown breaches emerged among other Government figures.

In Scotland, Dr Catherine Calderwood lost her job after visiting her holiday home during lockdown.

In England, the ironically named Professor Lockdown – Neil Ferguson – lost his job for breaking the rules.

Dominic Cummings insists he was doing the right thing for his family by travelling the length of England during lockdown.

Johnson could only see “integrity” in a man who jumped into a car with his wife, who was showing coronavirus symptoms, to take a four-year-old 260 miles north to relatives.

The defence, the excuse really, was that his aide, his proxy for a political strategy, only “followed the instincts of every father and every parent”.

He did not. Every parent, for the last 10 weeks, has fought the instinct to gather their family together. 

Some have coped with illness, the death of their partner, some the birth and even the death of their children, in cruel isolation without seeing their parents.

They followed the rules, not their instinct, Prime Minister.

Sticking together

In fact, what he did was put the lives of many of these law-abiding citizens at risk.

Johnson’s actions today have confirmed him as a man who will put ideaology before truth and who will burn down the house to save one of his chums.

Having taken the castle, the Brexit boys were never going to give it up easily.

Johnson and the Vote Leave campaign – led by Cummings – first won the Brexit referendum, then the Tory leadership and then a general election.

This band of brothers is sticking together. The strategy is that, so long as this story remains in the politics bubble, people will get on with their lives and the caravan will move on.

But he has underestimated the rage and indignation of the British public.

They will not forget a betrayal of this magnitude.

It is why Johnson, having bizarrely rehearsed all the “one rule for me, another for the rest of us” hypocrisy against Cummings, somehow concluded that he acted with “responsibly, legally and with integrity”.

This is not about the lockdown decisions of a method-acting maverick whose contempt of rules and parliament itself is well known.

From now on, the questions are about Johnson’s judgement, about his integrity, and his credibility. On this evidence, he lacks all three.