COVID CRISIS
Dominic Cummings says Covid plans ‘derailed’ by Carrie Symonds going ‘crackers’ over dog & Trump wanting to bomb Iraq
A CRUCIAL Covid meeting was thrown into chaos by Boris Johnson's fiancee "going crackers" about her dog and Donald Trump wanting help bombing Iraq, Dominic Cummings sensationally claimed today.
The PM's former adviser described how an "insane situation" in No10 on March 12 last year distracted officials from pressing pandemic decisions.
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During a dynamite appearance before MPs he revealed how Downing Street was in tailspin the day a critical decision about whether to impose household quarantine was being made.
The ex-aide said the high-stakes talks were "disrupted" because the US President wanted the UK to join a bombing campaign in the Middle East.
Mr Cummings recalled: "Everything to do with Cobra that day on Covid was completely distracted because you had these two parallel sets of meetings.
"You had National Security people running in and out as we were trying to figure out if we were going to do household quarantine."
He then claimed further pandemonium erupted because Mr Johnson's fiancee Carrie Symonds was incensed about an article about her dog Dilyn.
Ms Symonds publicly rubbished a report at the time that claimed the couple planned to rehome their rescue pooch, describing it as "complete c**p".
Laying bare a fiasco "so surreal it couldn't possibly be true", Mr Cummings said No10 resources were diverted to rebut these media reports.
He said: "The PM's girlfriend was going completely crackers about this story and demanding the press office deal with that.
"So we had this completely insane situation in which part of the building was saying we had to bomb Iraq, part of the building deciding whether to do quarantine, and the PM has his girlfriend going crackers about something completely trivial."
The swipe at Ms Symonds is the latest salvo in their bitter feud that saw Mr Cummings leave No10 last December following a power struggle.
And at today's marathon session he claimed the PM's fiancee was "desperate to get rid of me and my team".
He accused of her trying to install her friends into senior Government positions "in a way which was not only completely unethical but was clearly illegal".
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Mr Cummings said the attorney general eventually persuaded the PM not to join the US bombing campaign.
Washington carried out airstrikes that night in retaliation to a rocket attack that killed two US troops and a British soldier.
The top aide said in an explosive evidence session today:
- The PM and other top officials were on holiday in February and missed key pandemic prep meetings
- The PM said Covid was just a "scare story" in February and thought it was "just the new swine flu"
- Cummings claimed Boris was going to get Chris Whitty to inject him live on telly with Covid to show it was "nothing to be scared of"
- Trump "gazumped" everyone to procure PPE by using the CIA
- Herd immunity WAS a policy until Friday 13 March when it was abandoned, he said
- It was a "catastrophic mistake" not to make data public because there wasn't scrutiny of the scientists decisions
- He accused ministers of acting too slowly as they weren't prepared and had no plans
- 'Groupthink' led to delays in lockdown, but he said he "bitterly regrets" not pushing it from the first week of March
In bombshell evidence to the joint health and science committee, the PM's former top aide accused Boris of dismissing Covid as a "scare story" and "just swine flu" and admitted he and the PM had "failed" Britain by not locking down weeks before.
He said he should have been "hitting the panic button" far earlier than he was, and the nation should have locked down in the first week of March at the very earliest.
In a scathing assessment to MPs today, he claimed Helen McNamara, the deputy cabinet secretary, came to PM’s study where Mr Cummings was looking at his lockdown plans.
She reportedly told him: “I’ve been told for years there is a plan; there is no plan; we are in huge trouble.
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"I think we are absolutely f**ked. I think this country is heading for a disaster, we are going to kill thousands of people."
Mr Cummings claimed the PM was far too slow to lock down and Mark Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary, was suggesting Boris go on telly as late as March 13 to urge the public to have 'chicken pox parties' to spread Covid and build up immunity.
The top aide, who left Government last year in a flurry of fury and briefings, said March last year was like an "out of control movie".
He said: "Imagine this is like a scene from Independence Day... your whole plan is broken and you need a new plan - that is what the scene was like."
No10 was not on a war footing fast enough and "lots of key people were skiing in the middle of February", he raged.
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Ministers didn't realise the huge holes in their planning until it was too late, he claimed, and called the Cabinet office "terrifyingly s**t".
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And Matt Hancock should have been fired "about 20 times" for "lying to everybody on multiple occasions"; - and he told the PM to get rid of him.
There was no plan for furlough or for shielding until the very last minute, he said, but dodged questions on whether ministers should face corporate manslaughter charges.
Dominic Cummings compares Covid pandemic to Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day