DOMINIC Cummings today admitted he and Boris Johnson “failed” Britain and accused the world ignored alarm bells ringing and acted too late on Covid.
The scorned ex-aide has been firing off a stream of attacks for weeks and is finally unleashing his full-throated verdict of the Government.
He said he should have been “hitting the panic button” far earlier than he was, and said he raised the threat of Covid with the PM in early January.
In a scathing assessment to MPs on a joint science and health committee this morning, Mr Cummings said that No10 was not on a war footing fast enough and “lots of key people were skiing in the middle of February”.
He blasted: “At the time in no way shape or form did the government act like it was the most important thing in January (2020). It didn’t act like that in January let alone February.”
And ministers didn’t realise the huge holes in their planning until it was too late, he claimed, but admitted he did not attend key COBRA meetings.
The trademark scruffy PM’s former right-hand man swept into Parliament with an open-neck shirt, jeans and a black baseball cap this morning.
The PM’s former aide, who left Government last year after falling out with Boris and other members of the top team, started his box-office grilling by saying sorry to the public for failing them.
He apologised to families for not doing enough to save lives, adding: “When the public needed us most, the government failed.”
The top aide said in an explosive evidence session today:
- He should have been sounding the alarm bell on Covid earlier
- The PM and other top officials were on holiday in February during key pandemic prep meetings
- The PM said it was just a “scare story” in February and thought it was “just the new swine flu”
- Claimed he was going to get Chris Whitty to inject him live on telly with Covid to show it was “nothing to be scared of”
Mr Cummings this morning published his own evidence this morning, hours before the bombshell appearance.
He tweeted a photo purportedly showing a whiteboard in the PM’s study showing the “first sketch of Plan B”.
The picture, which appears to be taken in Boris Johnson’s study, is from March 13 last year, Mr Cummings has claimed.
He wrote: “Plan A ‘our plan’ breaks NHS,>4k p/day dead min.Plan B: lockdown, suppress, crash programs (tests/treatments/vaccines etc), escape 1st AND 2nd wave (squiggly line instead of 1 or 2 peaks)… details later.”
Mr Cummings said the Government’s original plan was for limited intervention, with the hope of achieving herd immunity.
But that was abandoned when it became clear the scale of the death toll that would result.
Messages that emerged last night reportedly show the ex-No10 aide ordered Cabinet Ministers to deny herd immunity was ever Government policy.
Mr Cummings has furiously accused Downing Street of “appalling ethics” for “lying” that herd immunity was never the Government’s Covid strategy.
And he is widely expected to brandish documents backing up his claims at today’s hotly-anticipated Commons Committee showdown.
But Boris Johnson’s allies believe newly-surfaced WhatsApps, reported by the Politico website, will blow a hole in Mr Cummings’ explosive accusation.
They show the all-powerful maverick adviser then demanded ministers deny herd immunity was the No10 approach.
A source told Politico: “A year ago he was ordering ministers to deny herd immunity was government policy, now he’s calling them liars for sticking to the lines he gave them.”
