Monday, May 25, 2020
Truth succumbs to coronavirus
They say that truth is the first casualty of war, and for Boris Johnson, who continues to hone his best Churchill impression, the pandemic is a war, so why were we surprised at his defence of Dominic Cummings at yesterday's press conference.
To be fair, the misrepresentation of what actually happened lay in the omissions, the failure to answer detailed questions such as, did Cummings stop for petrol on his way to Durham and in doing so interact with others, and how many times has he travelled up north since the lockdown began.
Indeed, the Mirror has published its own list of ten questions that Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings must answer. These include:
To be fair, the misrepresentation of what actually happened lay in the omissions, the failure to answer detailed questions such as, did Cummings stop for petrol on his way to Durham and in doing so interact with others, and how many times has he travelled up north since the lockdown began.
Indeed, the Mirror has published its own list of ten questions that Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings must answer. These include:
- Where did the PM or any ministers believe Mr Cummings was when he informed them he was self-isolating?
- How many ministers, including the Prime Minister, knew that Mr Cummings was travelling to County Durham – or that he was self-isolating there?
- Did Mr Cummings ask for advice from No10 before he travelled?
- Does Mr Cummings still insist the police never spoke to him or his family – even though Durham Constabulary stands by its statement?
Over in the Guardian, John Crace is excoriating about Transport Minister, Grant Shapps appearance in defence of the great northern excursion:
Shapps begged for more time to be allowed to talk about the A66. “It really is very important,” he said. Hell, if it helped he could even talk about a new cycle path in St Albans due to open in 2023. Or a new ferry service across the Ouse.
But Ridge was having none of it. She went for Shapps forensically, and time and again all he could do was smile vacantly, just playing for time knowing that at some point his ordeal would come to an end.
Except it was only just starting as Andrew Marr would be covering much the same ground little more than half an hour later. If anything the outing on Sky had only left Shapps more traumatised rather than better prepared as he became more and more sweaty and less and less coherent during the course of the interview. A low bar admittedly.
The Durham police were basically a bunch of liars who had been caught out telling the truth. And even if Dom had been to Barnard Castle he definitely hadn’t gone walking in a bluebell wood on a second visit to the north-east in April, because he had been assured Dom hated bluebells as they were the epitome of bourgeois remainer flowers.
So if he and his family had been seen, it must have been one of the many teams of body doubles that have plagued the Cummings family for years now. In any case, even though he definitely hadn’t talked to Dom or Boris over the past day, he knew for a fact that Dom hadn’t done any of this because they had told him so directly. And if there was one thing Cummings and Boris could be relied on for it was their advocacy of the truth.
The final word though must go to a rogue civil servants, who possibly mistook an official twitter account for his own:
I hope that he survives the subsequent inquiry.
Shapps begged for more time to be allowed to talk about the A66. “It really is very important,” he said. Hell, if it helped he could even talk about a new cycle path in St Albans due to open in 2023. Or a new ferry service across the Ouse.
But Ridge was having none of it. She went for Shapps forensically, and time and again all he could do was smile vacantly, just playing for time knowing that at some point his ordeal would come to an end.
Except it was only just starting as Andrew Marr would be covering much the same ground little more than half an hour later. If anything the outing on Sky had only left Shapps more traumatised rather than better prepared as he became more and more sweaty and less and less coherent during the course of the interview. A low bar admittedly.
The Durham police were basically a bunch of liars who had been caught out telling the truth. And even if Dom had been to Barnard Castle he definitely hadn’t gone walking in a bluebell wood on a second visit to the north-east in April, because he had been assured Dom hated bluebells as they were the epitome of bourgeois remainer flowers.
So if he and his family had been seen, it must have been one of the many teams of body doubles that have plagued the Cummings family for years now. In any case, even though he definitely hadn’t talked to Dom or Boris over the past day, he knew for a fact that Dom hadn’t done any of this because they had told him so directly. And if there was one thing Cummings and Boris could be relied on for it was their advocacy of the truth.
The final word though must go to a rogue civil servants, who possibly mistook an official twitter account for his own:
I hope that he survives the subsequent inquiry.
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Why Barnard Castle? Craig Murray has an answer. To the comment on Facebook that Murray is a "discredited conspiracy theorist", I would reply that he has been more often been proved right than wrong.
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