Dominic Cummings must resign, says Tory MP Steve Baker

A growing number of senior Conservatives are demanding the resignation of Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, over allegations that he broke the government’s lockdown rules on several occasions.

MPs including the former minister and 1922 Committee member, Steve Baker, and the chair of a select committee, Simon Hoare, said he should step aside to stop further damage to the government over its response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Party whips spent Saturday night calling backbenchers in an effort to shore up support following Guardian revelations that Cummings was spotted at a Teesside town more than 20 miles from his parents’ home in Durham.

One backbencher said the calls were a “desperate measure” to garner the support of MPs to save the job of the special adviser.

In an article for The Critic magazine, the former minister Steve Baker said the architect of the Vote Leave campaign should stand aside after travelling hundreds of miles with his son and wife, who had coronavirus symptoms, and then travelling to a nearby town.

“Dominic Cummings must go before he does any more harm to the UK, the government, the prime minister, our institutions or the Conservative party,” Baker wrote of his fellow Brexiter.

“Today’s newspapers are a disaster. Enormous political capital is being expended saving someone who has boasted of making decisions beyond his competence and who clearly broke at the very least the guidance which kept mums and dads at home, without childcare from their parents, and instead risked spreading the virus by travelling.

“It is intolerable that Boris, Boris’s government and Boris’s programme should be harmed in this way,” he wrote.

Baker’s comments follow disclosures in the Guardian/Observer and the Daily and Sunday Mirror that Cummings had travelled to his family’s home in Durham in breach of the lockdown rules, and was later spotted at Barnard Castle, 30 miles away.

In an analysis of Cummings’ working methods, Baker said his former colleague has revealed an arrogance that was apparent when he ran the Vote Leave campaign.

“As far as I am aware, among those who work with, rather than for him, only Michael Gove enjoys Dom’s respect.

“So it is hardly surprising when mums and dads were going without the childcare provided by their parents – perhaps while they were isolating for seven and 14 days with Covid-19 symptoms – that Dominic was suiting himself with a long drive, presumably with stops, to get help during his illness,” Baker wrote.

Baker has been joined by Simon Hoare, the senior Tory MP from the centre of the party and chair of the Northern Ireland select committee, who has also called for him to consider his position.

“With the damage Mr Cummings is doing to the government’s reputation he must consider his position. Lockdown has had its challenges for everyone.

“It’s his cavalier ‘I don’t care; I’m cleverer than you’ tone that infuriates people. He is now wounding the PM/Govt & I don’t like that,” he wrote on Twitter.

Sir Roger Gale, the Conservative MP for North Thanet, joined the chorus of backbenchers calling for Cummings to resign.

He tweeted: “While as a father and as a grandfather I fully appreciate Mr Cummings’ desire to protect his child. There cannot be one law for the Prime Minister’s staff and another for everyone else.

“He has sent out completely the wrong message and his position is no longer tenable.”

Damian Collins, the former chair of the culture select committee and MP for Folkestone and Hythe, said: “Dominic Cummings has a track record of believing that the rules don’t apply to him and treating the scrutiny that should come to anyone in a position of authority with contempt.

“The government would be better without him.”

Other senior Tories have privately been calling in Sunday newspapers for Cummings to go.

Ministers insisted Cummings had stayed put once arriving at a property in Durham, where he had travelled after contracting the symptoms of coronavirus to seek the support from his extended family.

Two new witnesses of Cummings’ movements in north-east england were revealed on Saturday in a joint investigation by the Guardian/Observer and the Sunday Mirror. One witness saw him in Durham on 19 April, days after Cummings was photographed in London having recovered from the virus.

A week earlier, Cummings was seen by another witness in Barnard Castle on Easter Day, 30 miles away from Durham, the investigation found. The town, which takes its name from the English Heritage site at its centre, is a popular destination for days out.

Robin Lees, 70, a retired chemistry teacher from the town, says he saw Cummings and his family walking by the Tees before getting into a car around lunchtime on 12 April.

When Cummings was apparently recognised a second time on 19 April, he was wearing his trademark beanie hat, and was heard commenting on how “lovely” the bluebells were during an early morning Sunday stroll with his wife Mary Wakefield.

The second witness, who declined to be named, said: “We were shocked and surprised to see him because the last time we did was earlier in the week in Downing Street.”

Cummings had been photographed on 14 April in Downing Street, the first time he had been seen back at work since recovering from the virus.