The man who served as Boris Johnson’s most senior adviser at the height of the coronavirus pandemic has apologized publicly for the UK government’s response to the crisis, which he has said fell “disastrously short” of what the public should expect.
Dominic Cummings, who quit his post in Downing Street last November, told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday that “when the public needed us most the government failed.”
Dominic Cummings branded Boris Johnson ‘unfit for the job’ of PM as he delivered an extraordinary condemnation of the ‘disastrous’ coronavirus response.
In an epic seven-hour evidence session with MPs, the maverick former No10 chief said Britons had been ‘lions led by donkeys’ and claimed that Mr Johnson viewed Covid as a ‘scare story’ just a month before the first lockdown.
Mr Cummings said ‘tens of thousands of people died who did not need to die’ as he conceded he should have been ‘hitting the panic button’ in mid-February but he had been ‘wrongly reassured’ by the WHO and others about the situation in China.
Having bungled the early phase of the crisis, Mr Cummings said the premier then opted to ‘hit and hope’ by deciding to shun a second ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown in September, despite entreaties from Prof Whitty and science chief Patrick Vallance among others.
Mr Cummings also insisted he personally heard the PM say in his study on October 31 that he would rather let ‘the bodies pile high’ than trigger a third lockdown. Mr Johnson has flatly denied making the remark.
Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says Dominic Cummings’ evidence reinforces the need for the Covid public inquiry to start immediately.
Credit: dailymail.co.uk
The post Boris Johnson was ‘unfit for the job’ of PM during Covid crisis -Dominic Cummings appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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