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'A double standard for the elite': foreign press criticise Boris Johnson's defence of Dominic Cummings

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Special Advisor Dominic Cummings departs his home in London, Britain, 27 May 2020. Calls for Cummings's resignation have increased since news broke the Cummings violated lockdown regulations when he and his wife - both suspected of showing Covid-19 symptoms - travelled across the country to self-isolate at a family's property. Coronavirus in Britain, London, United Kingdom - ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter

Dominic Cummings is known to have long held much of the British press in contempt.

But that attitude is now likely to extend to the foreign media, after some of the world’s respected newspapers weighed-in on the subject of his controversial trip to Durham.

Their verdict will make uncomfortable reading for those Conservative MPs who already believe the Prime Minister’s support for Mr Cummings is threatening to undermine the Government’s authority and the credibility of its coronavirus strategy.

To many looking in from overseas the affair is reflection of a malaise at the heart of Britain’s response to the worst public health crisis of modern times.

In the words of the New York Times: “For more than two months, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has floundered in his response to the coronavirus — abandoning widespread testing, dragging his feet on imposing a lockdown, leaving nursing homes unprotected, and muddling his message about how to reopen the British economy.

“But it took a rogue 260-mile car trip by Mr Johnson’s closest adviser to turn the tide of public opinion against him.”

In a damning dispatch the paper’s London correspondents, Mark Landler and Stephen Castle, conclude: “That ordinary Britons were consumed by the picayune details of an unelected political strategist’s personal travels, on a day when new government statistics suggested that the death toll from the coronavirus was closing in on 50,000, showed why the Cummings affair poses such a threat to Mr Johnson. It goes beyond the normal din of politics to become a topic for dinner table conversation.”

Is it time to move on Dominic Cummings poll
Is it time to move on Dominic Cummings poll

The Washington Post says that for Cummings’s trip to Durham to become the focus of such anger displays a fundamental difference between Britain and the US in the age of Trump.

Noting that compliance with the US’s “laxer and more haphazard” lockdown has been far less uniform than that of the majority of British people, the paper’s columnist, Ishaan Tharoor, writes:

“Britons across the political spectrum [are] irked by a powerful official acting with impunity — even if the act was simply a long drive in his car... Indeed, an element of what fuels the antipathy toward Cummings is the fear that he’s dragging Britain in America’s direction.”

There is a similarly damning verdict from mainland Europe, where the press has concluded that Mr Cummings ought to go, even if he will not.

Spain’s El Pais declared: “His refusal to express any remorse for breaking the rules of confinement has caused a political gale that may irreparably deteriorate the Prime Minister's political credit, just as his popularity declines and public opinion questions his erratic strategy during the coronavirus crisis.”

For France’s left wing Libération Mr Cummings’s unapologetic performance in the rose garden of No 10, on Monday, “confirmed that he had rewritten for himself the rules of the lockdown laid down by the Government for which he works.”

The centre-right Le Figaro wrote: “For the past five days, the prime minister has tried to rid himself of this embarrassing scandal over his main adviser flouting confinement. Alas, the Dominic Cummings row won't die down. Quite on the contrary."

In Italy - where more than 32,900 people have died of Covid-19 - Corriere della Sera, the country’s most widely read newspaper, concludes that Mr Johnson is willing to suffer huge political damage to avoid the downfall of his Rasputin “because Boris owes everything to Cummings, from Brexit to his electoral triumph”, even though the affair has exposed ‘a double standard for the elite’”.