Showdown in the rose garden

It was a consummation devoutly to be wished by every journalist: Dominic Cummings strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage of Downing Street. Not even the oldest lobby correspondent could recall anything quite like that press conference in the rose garden. It was like an improvised ritual, with the sacrificial victim baring his chest for the slaughter. At one point, the fourth estate became so engrossed as to be oblivious of the watching public: they forgot to use the mike and so their questions were inaudible. In the end, the only voice to be heard, hitherto unfamiliar but henceforth unforgettable, was that of Cummings himself.

It had begun as it ended: with a monologue. Having kept the assembled princes and princesses of the press guessing for half an hour’s agonising delay, he finally sauntered in, more elegant than usual in an open-necked, immaculately white shirt, sat down behind a table, glanced at the glass of water, briefly hesitated, and began. 

What we heard was a statement so long, exhaustive and meticulously detailed as to render most of the subsequent interrogation superfluous. Cummings wanted the world to know, not merely what he had done before, during and since his two weeks of self-isolation, but what was going through his mind at every stage. This was the journal of his plague year, a pilgrim’s progress through the lockdown, his very own Inferno. We were initiated into his dark night of the soul on the eve of his flight to Durham, how he wrestled with the dilemma of where to find a place of safety for his ailing wife and infant son, whether to trouble a Prime Minister who had already taken to his bed upstairs, and his anguish about what might happen if he himself caught the virus. We heard about the nocturnal journey, the sojourn at a cottage on the family farm, with his parents, sister and nieces so near and yet so far, the walk in the woods as the couple regained their strength, the drive to Castle Barnard to test his “weird” vision, the brief encounters that revealed their whereabouts, the return to London and the hostile mob of media and activists that are camped outside their home.

It was a compelling account, good enough to earn its author a job as a scriptwriter if his present post should become untenable. But now it was the turn of his inquisitors. The grandest of them all, of course, was Laura Kuenssberg, the La Pasionaria of Westminster. She set the tone for all the others by demanding to know whether there was one set of rules for Cummings and another for everyone else. One after another, the teatime Torquemadas came forward to play variations on this theme. All received the same response: no, he did not regret his actions; no, he did not owe anyone an apology; no, he had not considered resigning; no, he had never advocated “herd immunity”; no, he had not opposed the lockdown. For a full hour we listened to these polite but firm denials. At times he seemed tentative, as if searching for the right words, but he was never in trouble.

By the end, the man they like to cast as a James Bond villain, the Dr No of Downing Street, had been transformed into a three-dimensional human being. His cadaverous visage was no longer that of a gloating Gollum, but the face of a father fending off his foes. The Man in the White Shirt bore the weight of the world on his shoulders, while the press quibbled over minutiae.  

And so it ended in bitter disappointment for the avenging angels of the great British public. Their prey had eluded them. He finally took a sip of water, then stalked off, cool as a cucumber, to go back to his desk and his mission of saving us all from “the coronaviruses” (note the plural) that had apparently been occupying his thoughts “for years”.

What will the public make of this performance? The villain of the virus, responsible for thousands of deaths? Or a Daniel brought to judgement? The jury is still out, but its attitude will be filtered through the implacable hostility of the media. The Prime Minister, whose own press conference was a mere sideshow after the spectacle in the rose garden, let it be known that his support was not “unconditional” and could not be taken for granted. “People will have to make their minds up,” he conceded, implying that if the verdict was that the whole affair had damaged public consent to the lockdown, he would have to let his aide go. The price the latter has paid for becoming a fully rounded human being, instead of a daemonic figure behind the scenes, is that he is now mortal. It is possible, even probable, that Boris Johnson will soon have to carry on the Queen’s Government without his alter ego.

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more.” We shall doubtless hear more, perhaps much more, from Dominic Cummings, but he will never again mesmerise the nation as he has just done.