I have a friend who is not well. She had to spend lockdown away from her husband, who was working, being cared for by her parents.
She didn’t see her husband until restrictions were lifted, even though he was round the corner.
Another friend lost her husband. She’s had people at the end of a phone or video call, but not with her to help and hold her. We may all have watched the livestream of the funeral but we couldn’t be there to support her and pay tribute to her husband.
We’ll all know people who have made extraordinary sacrifices to keep to the rules, because it was the right thing to do.
Yet the person who helped write those rules pretty egregiously flouted them. And not only is he not sorry. He’s had a stream of government ministers backing him up. Straight out of the Trump playbook. If you’ve done something awful, just brazen it out.
The people who grabbed power by persuading people that anyone acting in their interest was some sort of elitist are now treating the same people with utter contempt.
Ed Davey has never been off the telly today, telling all the news outlets that Cummings should go and if he hasn’t gone by the morning then Boris Johnson would have to answer why.
Here he is doing various interviews as the story unfolded:
Acting Lib Dem leader Sir @EdwardJDavey says if allegations are true that the PM's most senior adviser Dominic Cummings broke lockdown rules "he should either resign or the prime minister should sack him".
More on this story here: https://t.co/TbwPUS1QuD pic.twitter.com/ND0HcGQiLS
— SkyNews (@SkyNews) May 23, 2020
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1264115077633933312?s=20
#lockdown is in danger of unravelling if #Cummings isn’t gone within days @LibDems acting leader @EdwardJDavey tells me: https://t.co/DO4C0ICW6v
— Cathy Newman (@cathynewman) May 23, 2020
"I don't know know what No 10 is playing at but I'm afraid they've been found out it looks like to me."
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey told LBC he believes the government "covered up" Dominic Cummings' lockdown breach. https://t.co/c1JWd5jrQz
— LBC (@LBC) May 23, 2020
It is not easy being ill and having to look after your child. But everyone else just gets on with it. Especially if they have or have been exposed to a dangerous virus that could kill people. Are we seriously expected to believe that they put nobody at risk with their trip to Durham. As a friend of mine pointed out, their bladders must have been pretty robust if they made it from London to Durham without going to the toilet. Did they stop at a services and potentially put people at risk?
Even if the government succeeds in its plan to brazen this one out, it’s vital that the opposition gets this all on the record and doesn’t just stand back and let it happen. One of these days the Conservatives will have to be accountable. That time may not be now, but it will come.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings