A tedious day trip to a market town that sparks a national crisis? We’ve all done it | Joel Golby

Dominic Cummings’s travels seem to have stoked more anger than years of Tory austerity. Still, it feels like he’s going to be fineAs reviews for Barnard Castle go, “I drove 260 miles, broke a pandemic-enforced nationwide lockdown that I personally helped introduce, risked the health of my extended family, rocked the stability of my own career, and torpedoed the reputation of both myself and the actual prime minister of the United Kingdom just to go there and see the Silver Swan automaton” takes some beating. I have never wanted to see a small Teesdale market town so much in my squalid little life. I cannot imagine the precious selection of keychains the gift shops there must have. I would risk it all for Barnard Castle.If you’ve somehow missed all this (imagine I am gesturing weakly at Dominic Cummings’s house, where a crowd of agitated neighbours, un-socially distanced TV journalists and – obviously, always – some sort of Led By Donkeys stunt van, are all assembled in waiting), then the headline news right now is: a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Daily Mirror found that Dominic Cummings, that Gollum-but-if-he-dressed-from-the-assorted-bags-in-the-backroom-of-a-charity-shop one from the government, broke lockdown in the hardest way possible by driving from London to Durham when his wife had coronavirus. Then – after a perfunctory WhatsApp-coordinated round of Tory ministers tweeting their “it wasn’t that bad, really” defences of the senior adviser – a further claim: once in Durham, as coronavirus infections crested nationwide, Cummings zigged out on a nice little day trip to the Castle, then back to London, then allegedly back again to Durham, where an eyewitness says they saw him among some woodlands calling the bluebells there “lovely”. Ladies and gentlemen, we got him? Continue reading…
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