‘If he’s guilty of anything it’s being a good father’ – Northamptonshire Conservatives react to Dominic Cummings headlines

Mr Cummings’ trips to Durham and Barnard Castle during the coronavirus lockdown has hogged the national headlines over the weekend, and has been a keen subject of debate both at senior and grassroots levels of political discourse.

Many Conservative MPs have made their views on Boris Johnson’s decision to keep Mr Cummings – which followed two weekend press conferences – known on social media, including Wellingborough MP Peter Bone.

Mr Bone told ITV News: “When advisors become the story, they go. I’m afraid Dominic Cummings has let us down by hanging on.”

But Andrew Lewer, the MP for Northampton South, said only that the call was up to the Prime Minister.

Responding to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, he said: “It is the Prime Minister’s call whether he keeps his Chief of Staff; he has been close to the situation and thus in a strong position to assess it.”

Asked whether the saga had potentially had an impact on the government’s messaging due the coronavirus pandemic, he added: “It is difficult to measure the impact on the Government’s messaging as the messaging has changed; I suspect the easing of the lockdown will be relatively rapid over the next two/three weeks and the messaging and guidance will continue to change again.”

Mr Lewer said he had had around 300 emails regarding the issue, though he said ‘quite a few’ were not from constituents.

Other MPs in Northamptonshire – including Andrea Leadsom, Michael Ellis and Chris Heaton-Harris – have failed to comment so far both in public and to our questions.

But Mr Cummings was more vociferously defended by Councillor Ian McCord, the leader of South Northamptonshire Council , and interim leader of the upcoming West Northamptonshire Council unitary authority.

He said: “As far as I can see you had a father and a mother, both with coronavirus symptoms, and a four-year-old kid. If he’s guilty of anything he’s guilty of being a good father. I don’t criticise him for that.

“The fact is there’s a large body of people who will never forgive Dominic Cummings because he won twice. He won the Brexit vote and also helped guide Boris to a big majority. In their view he’s committed two cardinal sins. If he got up tomorrow and tied his shoelaces you’d have people complaining about him.

“I just think he needs to crack on and do what he needs to do, and most of the people who are his critics are all coming at it from an angle. They don’t like him, and they never have, and it doesn’t matter what he does they will call for him to resign.”

But in an open letter to Mrs Leadsom, Liberal Democrats in South Northamptonshire have urged her to help ‘end the distractions’ and call for his resignation.

Councillor Chris Lofts said: “People right across South Northamptonshire have made incredible sacrifices to stop the coronavirus. Even if the Prime Minister keeps his blinkers on, Andrea Leadsom cannot be oblivious to how angry people are with this scandal.

“Each minute this scandal is allowed to drag on is another minute the Government is distracted from upscaling Britain’s testing capacity, securing PPE for frontline workers and preventing the tragic deaths in our care homes.

“They need to put the health, wellbeing and economy of our country before efforts to save the Prime Minister’s adviser.”