HENRY DEEDES watches Dominic Cummings' sensational testimony to MPs

With a glimpse of Hasselhoff chest rug, he let fly his fireballs: HENRY DEEDES watches Dominic Cummings’ sensational testimony to MPs

Kabooooom! Oh yes, we expected fireworks. What we didn’t anticipate was a full-blown mushroom cloud.

Dominic Cummings’ evidence to MPs yesterday was shock and awe. A highly-enriched, weapons-grade display of exploding phosphorescence and toxic fall-out which rained down over Westminster for seven and a half extraordinary hours.

Never before in select committee history has such a senior Government crony gone so spectacularly rogue.

Over the course of this marathon session of the science and health committees, the Prime Minister’s erstwhile eminence grise torched Boris, bazooka-ed Carrie, ridiculed former cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill and belittled those clever-clogs Sage boffins.

Kabooooom! Oh yes, we expected fireworks. What we didn’t anticipate was a full-blown mushroom cloud

Dominic Cummings’ evidence to MPs yesterday was shock and awe. A highly-enriched, weapons-grade display of exploding phosphorescence and toxic fall-out which rained down over Westminster for seven and a half extraordinary hours

Never before in select committee history has such a senior Government crony gone so spectacularly rogue

As for Matt Hancock, let’s just say the Health Secretary may struggle to respond to treatment. Hell, even poor Dilyn the dog got it in the neck.

The few unscorched by this fireball of retribution were a handful of Cummings’ oddballs and misfits – plus, intriguingly, Chancellor Rishi Sunak. Dom’s erstwhile ally Michael Gove was also barely mentioned.

Do these curious absences mean that the man David Cameron called a ‘career psychopath’ hopes to return to the heart of Government one day? Not after this orgy of bridge-burning.

But for all the drama, one large question. Considering Cummings’ iffy relationship with the actualite, how much of what he said can we ascribe to fiction?

He arrived at Portcullis House early doors – chin out, baseball cap on, eyes beaming like a milk float’s headlights. He was sporting the same white shirt and grey trousers he wore to give evidence on Government science policy in March.

This time, though, an extra shirt button was undone, exposing a Hasselhoffian chest rug. Give that man a gold medallion!

At first, Dom seemed different from the pistol-totin’, baccy-chewin’ gunslinger who had so insouciantly plonked himself down two months ago.

There was a new humility about him. He admitted the Government’s handling of the crisis had fallen ‘well short’ of what the public should expect. He apologised for the mistakes – ‘and my mistakes at that’.

At one point, he placed a palm against his forehead and winced. Gasp. Waterworks? No, but a close-run thing.

At one point, he placed a palm against his forehead and winced. Gasp. Waterworks? No, but a close-run thing

Soon Cummings’ modesty began to slip. Having initially sat up straight, he draped an arm languidly over the back of his chair. He claimed he had wanted to ‘push the panic button’ last March, but no one listened to him

Science committee chairman, ex-business secretary Greg Clark, bit down hard. Not one of life’s emoters, Greg. Especially when Cummings is involved. He loathes the man: It’s a Brexit thing.

Clark wanted to know about the early planning stages of the pandemic. Cummings admitted we didn’t move to a war footing until February.

He let slip that some key ministers were away skiing. Bang! First shot fired. As for Boris, back then he was still insisting the crisis was a ‘scare story’ and allegedly suggested that chief medical officer Chris Whitty inject him with the virus live on television as proof. I thought this was rather a gracious idea from Boris. Most PMs would have offered up Hancock as the sacrificial lamb.

Soon Cummings’ modesty began to slip. Having initially sat up straight, he draped an arm languidly over the back of his chair. He claimed he had wanted to ‘push the panic button’ last March, but no one listened to him.

He let slip that some key ministers were away skiing. Bang! First shot fired. As for Boris, back then he was still insisting the crisis was a ‘scare story’ and allegedly suggested that chief medical officer Chris Whitty inject him with the virus live on television as proof

Clark’s face flashed with an owlish puzzlement. Wasn’t Dominic the Prime Minister’s chief adviser? Ah, never my title, Cummings insisted. He was actually ‘assistant to the Prime Minister’, suddenly sounding like the man who brought in Boris’ custard creams.

When Cobra eventually gathered to discuss locking the country down, Dom claimed, the meeting was a shambles. National security advisers were darting in and out to speak to the PM – it turned out Donald Trump wanted to bomb Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s fiancee Carrie Symonds (or ‘girlfriend’ as Cummings unchivalrously kept referring to her) was going ‘crackers’ over a story in The Times about little Dilyn.

What a farce! All that was needed was for Whitty’s trousers to fall down after another ‘Next slide, please’.

More vaudeville-style tales followed: Deputy Cabinet Secretary Helen MacNamara walking into the Prime Minister’s office and declaring: ‘I’ve come here to tell you we’re absolutely f*****!’; Sedwill’s hare-brained idea for the public to host ‘chickenpox parties’ as a herd immunity strategy. ‘The whole thing,’ Cummings recalled like an American GI embedded somewhere deep in the Vietnamese jungle, ‘was like an outta control movie’.

Worst culprit in this cast of incompetents? That twerp Hancock, of course. Should have been sacked 15-20 times, said Dom, adding that pretty much every senior person in Downing Street agreed with him.

Worst culprit in this cast of incompetents? That twerp Hancock, of course. Should have been sacked 15-20 times, said Dom, adding that pretty much every senior person in Downing Street agreed with him 

Cummings pinched the bridge of his nose in agony as he regaled the committee with some of Matt’s calamities. The Health Secretary was ‘interfering’, a ‘liar’ and ‘incredibly stupid’. Oh, and the care homes debacle? All his fault, too.

Rosie Cooper (Lab, W Lancashire) inquired whether Hancock should face corporate manslaughter for such serial incompetence. Cummings paused and stroked his chin whiskers. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he finally croaked. Hardly an emphatic denial.

Some Opposition MPs such as Eeyore-ish Graham Stringer (Lab, Blackley) were pure class. Most of them were less interested in gathering new information about the handling of the pandemic than in goading Cummings to let rip on his former colleagues.

Rebecca Long Bailey (Lab, Salford) got briefly excited when Dom told her it was ‘completely crackers’ that Boris was in power. Mind you, he added, it was just as loopy that Jeremy Corbyn was presented as the alternative. Ooer. Hard-Left Becky didn’t like that.

It took housewives’ fave Dr Luke Evans (Con, Bosworth) to broach Cummings’s infamous Specsavers trip to Co Durham in April last year. Dom now claimed he’d skipped town because his family were getting death threats, but stood by the whole driving to Barnard Castle thing. The story was ‘weird’, he admitted. Cobblers, more like.

It was 16.38 when Clark eventually called time. Cummings had spoken for 458 minutes without so much as popping a lozenge in his mouth. Impressive.

God knows what’s he’ll be like at the inquiry.

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