FPJ Edit: Boris Johnson under attack

A seemingly innocuous journey undertaken by the British Prime Minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, during the coronavirus lockdown has become controversial, causing Boris Johnson a huge embarrassment. Cummings, the key strategist of Johnson’s Brexit plank and, later, of his poll-winning platform, drove 270 miles in his car during the lockdown along with his wife and four-year-old son in order to leave the latter in the care of his nieces. When the journey became public, a howl of protests followed. A number of ruling party MPs joined the braying British media which sought the resignation of Cummings. They said the author of the lockdown guidelines had himself violated them. Cummings defended his action, arguing that the rules justified the trip. Exceptions were explicitly provided in the guidelines. He however found few takers. Most argued that had it been known, people would have attended the funerals of their near and dear ones and gone and met their aged parents in care-homes. Johnson’s popularity ratings have fallen sharply since the controversy. But he seems to have decided to brazen out the storm, determined not to let Cummings go. Some in his own party are using the controversy to grind their own axes against the PM. Meanwhile, in the US, such an issue would not have caused a ripple, President Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, both presidential advisers, having travelled to New York at the peak of the lockdown defying the home-stay order. The British still have a heightened concern for public propriety and moral niceties. In this case, the public ire stems from the fact that the rule-framer himself had become a rule-breaker. Johnson’s moral authority stands diminished as a result.