Today the news has exposed the massive, unrepentant hypocrisy of the modern Conservative Party. Dominic Cummings, chief advisor to the Prime Minister, decided the lockdown rules weren’t really rules for him, and when his wife developed symptoms of Covid-19, he took her and their child on a 259 mile trip up north, to drop their child off with to drop the child off with relatives. This happened during the stricter phase of the lockdown, and the rule on anyone suspected of having the virus was for them to self-isolate, not make trips of hundreds of miles across the country.

I fully understand the desire to keep their kid safe. I’m a parent, so I get that. However, who thinks that if anyone else had made that kind of journey, for the same reason, they’d be treated as Cummings is now? That is to say, would that person have the full backing of their bosses?

To put it another way, Cummings, for all his posturing, broke government guidelines. That same government is defending is inexplicably defending him, whilst hilariously, ironically and hypocritically, tweeting those same guidelines. If you or I broke rules an employer had set up, what would we then expect to have happen? There would be consequences, yet Cummings appears set to avoid them.

Why not arrange for local childcare? The rules even speak of doing this. It was a flagrant breach of those rules. He shouldn’t get away with it.