Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, said that key people in government and in No 10 were skiing in the middle of February 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold.
Speaking to a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, Cummings said: “The government and No 10 was not operating on a war footing in February. Lots of people were literally skiing,” he said.
Cummings is giving evidence to the committee about the British government’s response to COVID-19.
Over the past few weeks, he has made explosive claims about the government and Johnson’s own response to the pandemic, including claims that Johnson said that he was willing to let “bodies pile up in the streets” rather than take the UK into a third lockdown.
He also said that Johnson saw COVID-19 as “a scare story” in February 2020 and compared it to swine flu.
He also said that the controversial idea of herd immunity – letting people get sick with COVID-19 to enable natural immunity build-up in society – was very much part of the government’s strategy in March 2020 because Johnson believed the British public would never accept a lockdown.
When Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on March 15, 2020: “We have a plan. Herd Immunity is not part of it” he was wrong.
“I am baffled as to why No. 10 is trying to deny it,” Cummings told the committee.
‘Nuclear Dom’
Cummings, referred to in the UK media as ‘Nuclear Dom’ due to his outspoken and controversial pronouncements, has already outlined much of what he plans to say in a 42-tweet tirade posted between May 17 and May 22.
In it, he accuses Johnson of “falling so far below the standards of competence and integrity that the country deserves” and claimed that securing herd immunity was the initial plan of the government to deal with COVID-19, something Johnson denies.
“No10 decided to lie: ‘herd immunity has never been… part of our coronavirus strategy’. V foolish, & appalling ethics, to lie about it. The right line wd have been what PM knows is true: our original plan was wrong & we changed when we realised.”
Cummings was the former director of the Vote Leave campaign which led the campaign to take the UK out of the European Union. When Johnson became prime minister, he joined him in Number 10 as an advisor but was sacked by Johnson in November 2020.
His own actions during the pandemic have seen him make headlines, including when it emerged that he had broken the government’s lockdown rules to go on a drive to a castle in northeast England. IN a widely ridiculed press conference he later said he did so to test his eyesight.
