LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has risked undermining his entire coronavirus strategy in an apparent attempt to save the career of one man.
Dominic Cummings, the prime minister's top adviser, has long since been the bête noire of opponents after he masterminded not only Johnson's election win in December, but also the highly divisive Brexit vote of 2016 that saw the U.K. leave the European Union.
But this weekend Cummings has united both foes and traditional allies in a white-hot fury after it emerged that he apparently brokehis own government's lockdown restrictions, traveling 264 miles with his family to their second home despite his wife having symptoms of COVID-19.
John Wilson, whose wife died with coronavirus in March, was among the many grieving relatives who said they felt angry having followed the government's rules — only to learn they had been apparently flouted with impunity by one of its most senior officials.
"On the day she died I could not be with her to hold her hand, I just sat by the telephone. I was not able to see her body," Wilson said in a letter to his member of Parliament that he posted on Twitter, a note he delayed writing to "let my rage subside so that I can be coherent and civil."
"Under severe mental and emotional distress I, like the vast majority of the population, have complied with your government's instructions in order to protect my fellow citizens," he said.
On Sunday, Johnson resisted growing calls to fire Cummings, saying that his aide had not broken the rules and had "no alternative" but to travel and had "acted responsibly, legally and with integrity."
Cummings made a statement Monday, a highly unusual act for an unelected official who is meant to operate behind the scenes.
He acknowledged that "many have been angry about what they have been seeing in the media about my actions," a rare moment of contrition for an iconoclast who doesn't hide his disdain for much of the media and the political establishment as a whole.
"I believe I made the right judgment but I understand that others may disagree," he said in the garden of No. 10 Downing Street.
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According to the government's official advice, people in Britain "must stay at home if you or someone you live with has symptoms of coronavirus."
Jenny Harries, England's deputy chief medical officer, told Sunday's briefing that the only exception was if "there is an extreme risk to life."
It does not appear that Cummings met this criteria when he made the decision to travel. He said Monday that although he later became sick, he was not experiencing symptoms before he left London.
None of his immediate family have been tested for COVID-19, he said, but that he was sure all three, including his son who was briefly hospitalized while in Durham, had been infected.
The incident itself may have been forgotten with a swift apology. However, it's Johnson's defense of Cummings, and refusal to answer basic questions about what happened, that has seen this morph into the latest crisis to batter his government during the pandemic.
Britain has reported the second-highest coronavirus death toll in the world, more than 36,000. Meanwhile Johnson has been accused of being slow to introduce lockdown measures, failing to stock protective equipment for health workers, and bungling his testing strategy.
The furor around Cummings shows no signs of going away three days after it was broken Friday by two British newspapers.
Proof of its resonance throughout the country can be heard on radio phone-in shows flooded with calls from angry citizens. And Cummings was verbally accosted while he walked to his front door Sunday.
The Daily Mail, a conservative tabloid, does not often agree with The Guardian's editorial line in the partisan world of British newspapers. On Monday it ran with the headline: "What planet are they on?" alongside pictures of Johnson and Cummings.
At least one senior police chief has said he fears some citizens will see this as a green light to ignore the rules themselves. That could mean an uptick in infections as the U.K. desperately tries to get its ailing economy off life-support.
"It makes it much harder for the police going forward," Martin Surl, the top police commissioner for the English county of Gloucester, told the BBC on Monday. "This will be quoted back at them time and time again when they try to enforce the new rules."
More than a dozen of Johnson's own Conservative Party lawmakers, senior police, health officials, government scientific advisers and senior clergy have condemned Cummings and the prime minister’s defense of him.
"I can say that in a few short minutes tonight, Boris Johnson has trashed all the advice we have given on how to build trust" among the public to fight COVID-19, tweeted Stephen Reicher, a University of St Andrews professor who sits on one of the government's advisory panels.
That came after a briefing Sunday in which Johnson avoided questions about what actually happened.
At the end of March, Cummings traveled with his wife and child, 4, from London to their second home in Durham, in the north of England.
The family's defense is that Cummings' wife was suffering coronavirus symptoms and they wanted to be nearer relatives who could provide childcare in the event both parents were incapacited.
On Monday Cummings answered some of the questions that had been swirling around his trip. He said he did not stop anywhere along the way, and that he did make another trip while in Durham, as one eyewitness said he did.
He said he did this to test his strength before attempting the trip back to London and only did so after taking medical advice. Government rules at the time prohibited all but non-essential travel.
"The rules allowed me to exercise my judgement about the situation I found myself in," he said. And to those who say he was guilty of breaking the rules: "I respectfully disagree."
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