COVID-19: 'Thousands of people died' in UK due to Johnson's ineptitude, says PM's ex-aide

Thousands of people died needlessly as a result of UK PM Boris Johnson’s inept handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, his former chief advisor Dominic Cummings said on May 26. During seven hours of explosive testimony to a parliamentary committee, Cummings told lawmakers that Johnson was “unfit for the job” as he had ignored scientific advice and wrongly delayed lockdowns. The PM’s former aide also claimed that Matt Hancock should have been fired for lying - something denied by the health secretary. 

According to BBC, Cummings on Wednesday painted a picture of policy failure, dithering and a government that had no useful plan for handling a pandemic. He told lawmakers that the “truth” is that senior ministers, senior advisers like him fell “disastrously” short of the standards that the public has a right to expect of its government in a crisis like this. He added that he would also like to say to all families of those who died unnecessarily how sorry he is for the “mistakes” that were made. 

‘Lions led by donkeys’ 

Further, Cummings, who was forced out of Downing Street at the end of last year after an internal power struggle, said that those on the frontline of the pandemic were like “lions” being “led by donkeys”. He went on to say that Johnson had told him he liked to be surrounded by “chaos” in Number 10 because it meant everyone had to look to the PM to see who is in charge. When asked if he thought that the UK PM was fit for the job to get the country through the pandemic, Cummings replied “no”. 

The former chief advisor said that despite nearly losing his own life to COVID-19, the PM thought the first national lockdown, on 23 March last year, had been a mistake. He said that Johnson was against a so-called "circuit breaker" lockdown in autumn 2020 for economic reasons, despite scientific advice. Cummings said that the UK PM was not taking any advice and he was taking his own decisions that he was going to ignore the advice. He claimed that the cabinet was not involved or asked. 

Moreover, Cummings even went to say that Johnson initially thought COVID-19 was just a “scare story” and the “new swine flu”. He said that PM had even offered to get Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty to inject him live on TV to show there was nothing to fear from the virus. Cummings said that Johnson had never wanted tougher border controls to prevent the spread of the virus, as he wanted to be like the mayor in film ‘Jaws’, who kept beaches open despite the threat of a killer shark. 

Image: AP