 When it comes to the biggest political story in May, there is really no competition. Remember, we were all coming out of a really severe lockdown. People hadn't seen friends or family for months. And then we discovered that the height of that lockdown, Boris Johnson's chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, had driven 260 miles across the country with coronavirus. Now, the most outrageous moment in this whole sorry saga was when Boris Johnson himself stood in front of cameras and said that Dominic Cummings had just done what any parent would have done. It smashed a hole through the government's public health strategy. I mean, the legacy of it still stays with us today. However, the most surreal moment in this whole sorry saga was when Dominic Cummings himself gave an hour-long press conference in the Downing Street Rose Garden. The years I've warned of the dangers of pandemics, last year I wrote about the possible threat of coronaviruses and the urgent need for planning. The truth is that I had argued for lockdown. I did not oppose it. But these stories are created a very bad atmosphere around my home. I was subject to threats of violence. People came to my house shouting threats. There were posts on social media encouraging attacks. There were many media reports on TV showing pictures of my house. I was also worried that given the severity of this emergency, this situation would get worse. And I was worried about the possibility of leaving my wife and child at home all day and often into the night while I worked in number 10. I thought the best thing to do in all the circumstances was to drive to an isolated cottage on my father's farm. So no, it wasn't a particular need that his child had. It was basically because Dominic Cummings is famous. Some people have written some bad things about him and then some people have shouted at him at his house. Now, I don't know if anyone else's experience of lockdown was completely different to mine. But I didn't see any roving protests of angry mobs. I'm trying to threaten people in their homes. The streets were completely empty. And also, I mean, if you are a public figure and you're worried that people are going to cause concerns outside your house, you can always call the police, right? You don't have to drive 270 miles with coronavirus in the middle of a pandemic. It does not stack up. I mean, also worth mentioning that Vuvuzela in the background was really weird, wasn't it? Kind of reminded me of those big Brexit, again, very surreal moments which we've had in British politics over the last two years. It's also odd actually that my sense, whenever there's been a political crisis because it's been so long since 2017, is that political crisis, we're going to have an election. It's really weird to have political crisis, but oh, we've got them for four and a half years anyway. But I suppose on that, we're going to go through it bit by bit. But first some comments on that particular point. Was he justified? I'm going to know the answer, but we have to do this. Was he justified in going all the way to Durham, just because some people had written bad things about him in a newspaper? Will people find that credible? No, it's not credible. And I'll explain why it's not credible. So at the time of Dominic Cummings's illness, it was the height of the lockdown, right? We're really thinking about the peak in terms of infections, deaths and the level of restrictions governing the British public. So there were not roving mobs. I had no reports of that. What's happened is that because of the uproar yesterday with the Led by Donkeys protest, the footage of people heckling Dominic Cummings, what government outriders have done is created a mobious strip defence. They've folded time back on itself. And the argument essentially is that because his neighbours were angry visibly at him having broken the lockdown and driven 270 miles to County Durham, he had to break lockdown and make his neighbours angry by driving 264 miles or whatever it is from London to County Durham. So they've literally been, you know, inverted the laws of linear time to make this argument work. And the reason why they're hoping it does, because those are more recent images that people have seen and so it sticks in people's minds. But it's completely absurd. This morning I was on Twitter and I tweeted something perfectly innocuous about some of that footage saying this demonstrates that there's real cut through here. And I've suddenly got Philip Blonde and Alexine saying it's disgusting that I'm taking pleasure in it. Neat identical wording. So I do actually think that this is something which was being trialled by, you know, key right-wing conservative outriders earlier in the day. And they thought, right, this is going to be one of the main things that we put in there because those images are fresh. And so it will seem justified. Okay, let's go through some more key moments from that speech. So not only did he fail to offer justifications for the infractions we knew about, he also introduced new ones. Right. So in his explanation, he revealed that after his wife became sick, he went back to work. So this is when the principal advice we've all been giving was, yeah, obviously don't leave your home. But also if anyone is suffering from symptoms of coronavirus, stay at home. Don't go back to work. He went back to work. Since that speech, they sort of clarified to say, oh, they weren't quite symptoms of coronavirus. But I mean, she was ill in the middle of a pandemic. Everyone that Dominic Cummings had been working with had coronavirus. So it was quite easy to join the dots. Also during his period of self-isolation, he went for a walk in the woods. Don't worry, his dad owned the woods, which is supposed to make it more acceptable. But not many people had that privilege of when they're locking down for 14 days, they get to have a nice walk among nature. And actually, this is the most serious one, the most serious health impact that his trip could have had, which is his child fell ill on the 2nd of April. And his wife then suffering from COVID symptoms took him to hospital. Ultimately Cummings, who was still within the isolation period, went to pick him up from hospital. Now, obviously, it's acceptable if your kid is ill to take them to hospital. But you have to put this in context, which is that Dominic Cummings was coming from London with coronavirus symptoms. London at this point in time was the COVID hotspot to a part of the country with very low levels of COVID-19, the Northeast at that point in time. And then their family were going to a hospital in the Northeast. And this is the principal reason why the government guidelines tell you to not move from one part of the country to another part of the country, because what you can do is seed COVID-19 from a place with a high level of coronavirus into a part of the country with a very low level of coronavirus. And that is exactly what they did. Not only does that seed the virus, but it can also put stresses on health services in rural areas, which is precisely where he was. So this is what it was designed to do, probably what's going to be remembered most from this press conference, actually, which is that one of the other revelations about Dominic Cummings was not only he went to Durham to self-isolate in this house, but also he went for a day trip to Bernard Castle, which is a picturesque town 30 miles drive from his home or his parents' home in Durham. This was on the 12th of April. And this is the reason he gave as to why he had to make this trip. On Sunday the 12th of April, 15 days after I first displayed symptoms, I decided to return to work. My wife was very worried, particularly given my eyesight had seemed to have been affected by the disease. She did not want to risk a nearly 300 mile drive with our child, given how ill I had been. We agreed that we should go for a short drive to see if I could drive safely. We drove for roughly half an hour and ended up on the outskirts of Bernard Castle town. We did not visit the castle, we did not walk around the town. We parked by a river. My wife and I discussed the situation. We agreed that I could drive safely. We should turn around, go home. I felt a bit sick. We walked about 10 to 15 meters from the car to the riverbank nearby. We sat there for about 15 minutes. We had no interactions with anybody. I felt better. We returned to the car. An elderly gentleman walking nearby appeared to recognise me. My wife wished him happy Easter from a distance, but we had no other interaction. So the reason he had to drive on a 60 mile round trip to a picturesque part of the northeast was to test his eyesight. Aaron? I just want to rewind a bit here. Let's get down to some brass tacks. He says his wife, Mary Wakefield, was exhibiting symptoms on the 27th of March. But that didn't include a sore throat or a cough, which of course they're the two primary symptoms of COVID-19. So what symptoms was she exhibiting on the 27th? He left work. He went to go see his wife. She said, I'm so worried that I won't be able to look after our kid at the moment. And I think I may have COVID-19, even though she didn't have these two leading symptoms, I think it's a really, really important question to ask. Well, what symptoms did she have? Which Dominic Cummings? This is a senior person in government paid a hell of a lot of money to do. A really important job for him to say, well, you've probably got it. That means I've probably got it. That means our child's probably got it. So she didn't have those two leading symptoms. What were they? Then yesterday, Boris Johnson says, well, Dominic Cummings was on the brink of being incapacitated. So he had to go to Durham. Wait, he's not showing any symptoms. His wife is showing some symptoms, but they're not the symptoms normally associated with COVID-19. Nobody's actually asking what those symptoms were. And now you're saying he was on the brink of being incapacitated. Furthermore, Dominic Cummings has said, well, our normal avenues of childcare weren't available. What were they? Why not? You know, I'm not a big fan of the Keir Starmer. Let's have an inquiry, because I think having an inquiry about somebody taking a drive, however long or politically important, is probably the most English thing imaginable. But I do think there are certain questions here which need to be answered. And actually, you know what, under oath, cross-examined with a judge, maybe not a bad idea. And finally, the child going to the hospital point, on the 2nd of April, Dominic Cummings said he could barely get up to walk. And yet on the 3rd of April, he's okay to pick his wife and son up from hospital, because he says no taxis were available. Really? How come? Why? And so I think generally speaking, this alibi or set of alibis has got more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese munched on by several rodents. It doesn't add up. And there's so much bullshit here. There are so many misrepresentations. It kind of takes you a little while to work your way through it. But after a while, you say, look, I can give you the benefit of the doubt for one, two, three things. But, you know, it looks here like we've got misrepresentation piled on misrepresentation. And I think we'll make that clear by the end of the show. This does not stand up. And he certainly shouldn't still be in a job. I agree with all of that. But it's almost more than that. Because even on the face of it, the story, even as he wants us to accept it happened, is not in any way justifiable. I mean, we'll get onto that in a moment. First of all, Ash, this driving to Barnard Castle to test his eyes. What did you make of that particular excuse? It doesn't add up. He's a concerned father who anticipating that there might be a discontinuity in childcare drive 260 miles because he was so concerned for his son's wellbeing. However, when it came to seeing whether or not it was safe for him to drive, put his four-year-old son in the back of the car and went for a drive of at least an hour long, doesn't make sense, does not make sense on any level. There's also a very key fact, which I'm very actually surprised that none of the journalists brought up in the press conference with Dominic Cummings, which is that the day he drove to Barnard Castle, I don't know how you pronounce it, to test his eyes, which is not something people do anyway. If you want to test your eyes, you don't get your family in a car and drive for half an hour. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But potentially, that trip to this picturesque town makes more sense with the detail that the 12th of April is Dominic Cummings' wife's birthday, right? So we're supposed to believe that. It's the perfect day for an eye test. Yes. You know, everyone else in the country was showing so much restraint to not go to the funerals of loved ones who had not died, to not visit their families who were sick, right? Or just to stay in when it was their birthday, you know, minor things as well. And this guy went to a picturesque town. The government's chief advisor breaking the lockdown for his wife's birthday. It's phenomenal. You could not make it up. Can I just very briefly spell out what happened? So Dominic Cummings himself admits that when his wife alerted him that she was feeling very, very ill, he left work, saw her. She'd been saying that she felt like she was going to pass out. Sure, she didn't have the cough and the fever allegedly at that time. But we knew that extreme fatigue was one of the coronavirus symptoms at that time. And he then went back to work. So there, you've got a breach of the rules because immediately you were supposed to self isolate as an entire household and not break that isolation for 14 days. You don't have a I just forgot the whole puncher at work excuse, right? There's not that kind of caveat. That's the first breach. Even if we accept this idea that there are some kind of childcare exemption, and that's why he had to go 260 miles to County Durham. Let's just brush over that for a second. Although, again, I don't think that that's a valid excuse. And he also don't think it's believable that he went on a full tank of Petron didn't have to stop to go to the toilet with a four year old in the car. But that's for another day. You've got this trip to Barnard Castle where they have stopped at a river to sit down, which you're not supposed to do. They shouldn't have been, you know, leaving the house, but they stopped at a river, got back in the car, stopped the car again and got out at some woods because apparently the four year old needed the toilet and they got out and played for a while. So again, that's a non essential journey. It's not for exercise. It's shortly after they've been very ill indeed. I think rather, you know, conveniently they were saying this was on day 15. So it was just outside the 14 day isolation window. That's another very, very clear breach. And so what I don't understand is how this sort of avalanche of detail is supposed to exonerate him. In fact, it condemns him. These are really clear ways in which the lockdown guidance has been contravened. I simply don't understand why Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson cooked that up and went, yeah, that's me exonerated off the hook. Dominic Cummings was asked by Gary Gibbon from Channel 4 why if what he did was within the regulations, no one else knew that that was the regulation. So if he has, you know, spun this story, we're driving 270 miles because you're worried you and your partner are both going to be incapacitated even though you're still not sure if either of you have coronavirus. And so, you know, if this whole story sounded like it was following the rules to Dominic Cummings, why did no one else know that these were the rules? With great respect, Gary. Who else has driven that distance? I'm trying to answer the question with great respect. It's not just a simple matter in the regulations. The regulations describe various exceptional circumstances where it may not be possible to follow the rules. It doesn't say you must stay at home in all circumstances. It says that there are some circumstances in which you won't be able to follow these rules. And it seemed to me that I was in such an exceptional circumstance and I was trying to judge, balance all of these very complicated things. People will be staggered here, you say that, when the message was so clear, stay home. Is the fact that the Prime Minister can't do his job without you? The guidance says if you are living with children and reading out the actual guidance, if you're living with children, keep following this advice to the best of your ability. However, we are aware that not all these measures will be possible. He's saying it was an exceptional circumstance. We were so worried, my son, my son, like Billy Zane, in the final scene of Titanic, I have a child. And yet, we know after he went to the cottage on his family farm, he never had any help with childcare. They were fine. They could have done exactly what they did at home in London. And he said, oh, well, I have my sister, she could drop off groceries. Hello. Tesco can do that. Ocado can do that. Or are you such an anti-elitist that despite living in a multimillion-pound London house, you're going to pretend that doesn't exist. You've never done it before. I'm calling bullshit. So this whole thing about, these were such incredible, intense, extenuating circumstances. Well, if that was the case, then how can you and your wife were perfectly fine in administering childcare? Which I'm really happy about, by the way. That's great, because many people couldn't. That surely proves the fact that they didn't look after your son, the fact that they never entered this cottage according to you, that would prove you didn't have to do this. So the idea that you should be able to do this would, if that was to be generalized as a loophole, hundreds of thousands, millions of people would be able to travel across the country. Because it turns out it actually wasn't that extenuating a circumstance. So like Asha said, this is not a set of alibis. This is like a charge sheet, but you're reading it and thinking it gets you out of jail. And there's four, five, six instances of it. It's completely insulting to everyone's intelligence. So that bit that he was reading out of, not all of this will be possible if you've got very small children. You should be following these rules to the best of your ability. When in the context, it's pretty clear that what that's referring to is self isolating within a house. And what you're trying to do is keep clearly infected people away from people who aren't infected by keeping them in different rooms. Within the context, that's what it refers to. But because there's this gap in the wording, and it doesn't say we are explicitly referring to this part, he's now wielding it as though it's some kind of legalistic fig leaf for his own wrongdoing. And when it comes to this idea of safeguarding exemptions, because that was the very specific word that was used in Grant Shaps's press conference was safeguarding, was I spoke to a social worker, because the word safeguarding doesn't just mean whatever you want it to, it's got very specific applicability when it comes to child protection. So I spoke to a social worker and I promise it wasn't my mum, it was one of the few social workers who I'm not directly related to. And I said, as someone who works in children's social care, what does safeguarding and being exempt from lockdown rules mean to you? And she said it's very clear that it applies to cases of abuse, neglect, or a significant deterioration in the safety of a child. So it doesn't just refer to, you know, conditions or an environment which temporarily might be considered suboptimal. So less playtime with your child or less engagement with your child. It means that there's a significant deterioration in their safety, or a significant escalation in risk. And one of the reasons why there's so much emphasis on significant deterioration of safety or significant escalation of risk is because for so many people who work directly in children's social care, the conditions in which these children are already living is already suboptimal. So they've got to work out very, very carefully how they balance these different kinds of safeguarding needs, safety from the virus and also safety from unsafe living situations. So it was completely inappropriate for that language to be wielded by Dominic Cummings in this circumstance, and in particular, when they didn't need any of this much-wanted help with childcare from his 17-year-old niece and from his sister. And I think that comes back to what you said, Michael, which is now after the fact they're having to come up with more and more and more elaborate narratives around each individual breach of the lockdown rules because it's covering one central truth. And the central truth is I had a nicer place to stay than London. And unlike you, Bolls, I could take myself up there to my father's estate with its private wood and its lovely cottage and have fun there with my family through what's quite a difficult time. That's what was going on.