Cummings: I Have No Regrets About What I Did

Coronavirus: PM's aide refuses to quit

- Sam Lister

Dominic Cummings yesterday insisted he had “exceptional” reasons for fleeing London at the height of the coronavirus lockdown.

The Prime Minister’s chief aide refused to apologise for taking his family on a 260-mile journey to Durham to stay in a cottage on his family’s farm soon after the nation was told to stay at home.

Mr Cummings said he took reasonable and legal steps to look after his four-year-old son after he feared himself and his wife Mary may become too ill to care for him.

Boris Johnson said he regretted the “confusion and the anger and the pain that people feel” but gave his full backing to his under-fire adviser.

Mr Cummings took the extraordinary step of holding his own press conference in Downing Street’s Rose Garden.

After giving a detailed statement explaining his actions and why he took them, the adviser then took a series of questions from the media.

He rejected claims he had acted as if there was one rule for the public and another for the ruling elite and insisted he had obeyed the lockdown rules.

Critical