Boris Johnson’s government is failing on all the rules for handling a crisis, including the way it is protecting embattled Dominic Cummings, a former Downing Street media chief claims.
Cabinet “muppets” lead the daily press conferences on coronavirus, and scientific experts are being used as “political cover”, according to Alastair Campbell.
“A crisis like this needs the prime minister and the cabinet to be focusing on nothing but getting the job done, and every single one of them – the whole cabinet, the whole government machine – has been mobilised to try to save Dom,” he said.
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The former head of communications for Labour under Tony Blair’s leadership launched a vicious attack on the way No 10 was managing the coronavirus pandemic, setting out a list of key points he said any government should do in a crisis.
They included “ensuring every part of government was brought in including the London mayor and the Scottish first minister”, whom he said Mr Johnson had alienated.
Instead of a “develop, execute, narrate strategy” the cabinet had none, he told the BBC, adding: “You need to throw everything at the crisis. They are throwing everything at saving Dominic Cummings.”
Mr Johnson has stood by Mr Cummings in the face of numerous calls for him to quit, including from Tory backbenchers, over his apparent breach of lockdown rules by driving to Durham when his family should have been isolating at home.
A new opinion poll has shown that Mr Johnson’s approval rating has fallen to -1, a 20-point drop in four days, while overall Tory government approval has fallen to -2, dropping 16 points in a day.
“You have to use experts well. They’re using experts as political cover,” the former spin doctor claimed. The chief and deputy chief medical officers for England, as well as NHS chiefs, appear alongside politicians at the daily press conferences.
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In Monday’s conference, Mr Johnson did not mention staying at home. “The scientific measures are out the window. This is now crisis management on the health of millions of people being decided by this pathetic bunch of people sitting around saying ‘how can we get Dom off the front pages?’” he said.
Mr Campbell claimed the cabinet members who appear daily were “muppets”.
Another rule was: “You show genuine empathy for the public. If I hear one more time that their thoughts and prayers are with the people they’ve helped to kill…”
Accusing the government of worrying about media management more than the tens of thousands that “their incompetence and indifference had killed”, he said the government won’t follow the rules “because they don’t know how to”.
As for Mr Cummings’s insistence that his trip of 260 miles was allowed in the rules, he said the clause was inserted into the Bill to protect women and children at risk of domestic violence “so let’s not pretend that that covers these circumstances. There are no exceptional circumstances in this so far as I’m concerned. He should have stayed at home.”
The Independent has asked Downing Street to respond.
