Page 16 Daily Mail, Wednesday, May 27, 2020

c o mm e n t xcuses, excuses. To think we thought we’d heard ’em all. Then up Listen to the anger pops Dominic Cummings on a roasting Bank of Middle Britain ­HolidayE afternoon to serve us a IT’S claimed by his supporters that the 24-carat corker. outrage over Dominic Cummings’s decision His explanation that he made a to flout lockdown rules is largely the 60-mile round trip from his parents’ confection of a cynical media. ­Durham farm to picturesque Barnard They argue that what was a minor Castle on Easter Sunday merely to infraction at worst has been blown out of check that his eyesight was up to driving all proportion, in a blatant bid to damage back to London, raised more questions the Prime Minister through his most senior than it was supposed to answer. Why couldn’t the Prime Minister’s adviser. Inside the metropolitan bubble, senior aide simply have taken a spin his enemies – mainly from the vanquished around his family estate, rather than Remain Left – may be howling for his head. embark on a 90-minute journey? Why But with ordinary voters, his defenders say, did his wife and child need to accompany the story simply doesn’t ‘cut through’. him? It was an account so iffy it was a X / PA / BBC / PA / X

Our poll today shows how spectacularly mercy it didn’t make the petals in E wrong they are. In the court of public Downing Street’s Rose Garden wilt. opinion, Mr Cummings is very definitely Before he’d even finished his rambling guilty as charged. explanation, a nation cried collectively: Eighty per cent of people believe he broke ‘Pull the other one, pal!’ lockdown rules. Almost as many disbelieve And so Cummings’ alibi looks ­destined to join a long line of political his excuses. R / Getty Pictures: Sixty-six per cent want him to resign. A tall tales which simply don’t cut la moutarde in the believability stakes. Pull the other one: Unlikely excuses from, clockwise from top left, Boris slightly smaller proportion say Boris Here’s a collection of similar eye- Johnson should sack him. Most ­rollers we’ve heard over the years... Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Nick Clegg, Keith Vaz and Prince Andrew devastatingly, 55 per cent of Tory voters believe he must go. Middle Britain is angry. And the anger will linger as long as Mr THE BADGER Cummings remains in post. ENTHUSIAST It is true, of course, that many of his Poor Ron Davies. The once high- critics are motivated by prejudice. The ­flying Secretary of State for Wales was Mail is emphatically not among them. sacked from Tony Blair’s cabinet in This paper has nothing personal against 1998 after a self-proclaimed ‘moment Mr Cummings, indeed we admire his of madness’ (© Alastair Campbell) intellect and prodigious campaigning when he was nicked on Clapham ­Common while seeking an amorous It’s the abilities. But our belief – clearly shared by exchange with a gay stranger. most of the country – is that he broke Five years later, controversy struck lockdown rules he himself helped to devise. again when he was pictured leaving a He must be held to account. well-known cruising spot on a lay-by near Bath. Ron’s response: ‘I’ve actually been there watching badgers.’ His attempts at self-justification have been After unsuccessfully standing as a implausible, especially the ‘eyesight-testing’ Plaid Cymru candidate in 2012, Davies excuse for his Easter jaunt to Barnard has fallen off the radar, which is a pity. A way they Castle with his wife and son. Unsurprisingly, guest slot on BBC’s Springwatch help- 78 per cent don’t believe him. ing Kate Humble seek out snuffle-nosed It pains us to say, but he is damaged critters in the West Country gloaming goods, and by hanging on in Downing would be a hoot for us viewers. Street, he provides a rallying point for anti- Tory sentiment. With the economic pain of THE LESSONS Covid just beginning, that is something Mr IN TECHNOLOGY Johnson can’t afford. Boris Johnson’s first Conservative It’s summer now and, thanks to furlough conference as Prime Minister last year payments, millions have been able to enjoy tell ‘em! was overshadowed by reports of his the balmy weather without a thought for friendship with IT expert Jennifer the massive economic shock to come. Arcuri, a turbo-charged blonde with a By midwinter, there could easily be 3 Gatling gun gob for gibberish. As Dominic Cummings claims million unemployed. Rising inflation and Despite claims that BoJo had visited prices, negative equity, spiralling welfare her East London flat while he was bills, swathes of British industry in decline. ­London Mayor, pole-dancing Jen he drove 60 miles to, er, check These are the spectres looming. denied impropriety, with a friend of hers explaining he had just ‘wanted to If they do materialise, Mr Johnson will be hip and understand tech’. his eyesight, HENRY DEEDES need all the political capital he can muster Boris was recently cleared of to retain public confidence. Squandering investigation by The Independent Office what he has in this calm before the storm for Police Conduct for giving Arcuri revels in the far-fetched is sheer folly. £126,000 in public funding for her tech At times of crisis, we need leaders we can company, Hacker House. But ‘technology believe in. This paper does believe in Mr lessons’ is surely destined to replace porkies that make so many Johnson and what he’s trying to do to Private Eye’s famous ‘discussing ‘unite and level up’ the country. Uganda’ phrase — allegedly deployed by We rejoiced in his remarkable election journalist Mary Kenny after disappear- powerful men look ridiculous victory. We applauded his triumph in ing at a party with one of the country’s cabinet ministers — as politics’ getting Brexit done. sexual euphemism du jour. And although he has made some mistakes, acquired chums had merely his accuser Virginia Roberts’ for the terrorists who carried his policies have brought Covid under dropped round to his apartment claims that he’d been ‘dripping out the 1972 Munich Olympics control without the NHS collapsing under ‘JIM’ THE at 11.30pm on a Saturday night from sweat’ as they danced massacre. The Labour leader’s its weight. That is to his enormous credit. ‘to discuss interior decor’. together at Tramp nightclub. response to the controversy — ‘I REPAIR MAN was present at that wreath-lay- However, we cannot be an uncritical A deeply unimpressed Apparently he had a ‘peculiar Ah, Keith Vaz. That House of Commons standards condition’ which prevented him ing, I don’t think I was actually friend. Useful though he may be, our poll ­unnerving mixture of vinegar ­commissioner took one look at from perspiring after being shot involved in it’ — was roundly starkly demonstrates the damage Mr and oil. Voice like a well-tuned Vazeline’s claims and branded at during the Falklands War. considered unsatisfactory. Cummings is doing to both Mr Johnson French horn. Gait like a them ‘not believable and, To compound this palpable Corbyn’s leadership never and the Tory party. ­tarantula. What a uniquely frankly, ludicrous.’ codswallop, it was said that did shrug off the anti-Semitism In most circumstances, personal loyalty is creepy piece of work he is. after the cameras finished charges which hung over his greatly to be admired. In this case, the The one-time European THE VERY ­rolling, the clunkheaded Prince party prior to their electoral British public says it has gone too far. ­Minister’s political undoing insouciantly sauntered over to thumping last December. finally came in 2016, when DRY PRINCE Windsor Castle to inform his This incident marked AGED just 25, gambling addict Chris reports surfaced of him soliciting What was the most wince- mother the interview had all the murkiest stain on his ÷ Bruney killed himself after losing sex from two male prostitutes inducing moment of Prince gone rather swimmingly. ­unpleasant tenure. £119,000 in five days. Betting firm Winner and offering to pay for cocaine Andrew’s Newsnight interview had ‘groomed’ him with bonuses and free for a third, all the while posing, over his friendship with ‘I WAS THERE BUT THE CONSTANT bets instead of shutting his account. for reasons unknown, as an Jeffrey Epstein? Despite this flagrant breach of player industrial washing machine His soft-soaped description of NOT INVOLVED’ GARDENER protection rules, Winner’s parent company repair man called Jim. Epstein’s paedophilia as ‘unbe- Jeremy Corbyn’s capacity Amid the duck houses and got away with a derisory fine. No apology, The coup de grace in this coming’? The ‘straightforward for making a bad situation moat dredging, few more no one brought to book. Giving richly exotic cocktail of sex, shooting weekend’ he enjoyed worse was no better illustrated laughable excuses emerged drugs and washing machine with Ghislaine Maxwell? than in 2018, when a bombshell from the 2010 expenses scandal inducements to keep addicts gambling is than from Lib Dem leader costing lives. It’s high time this hoses came when Keith/Jim No, the true hide-behind-the- picture unearthed by the Daily explained to the Parliamentary sofa moment came when the Mail showed him at a Tunisia contemptible practice was banned. authorities that his newly Prince attempted to rubbish wreath-laying ceremony in 2014 turn to page 19