Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday he wouldn't fire his chief aide for allegedly violating the national coronavirus lockdown rules that he helped to create.
Johnson defied a growing clamour for the dismissal of adviser Dominic Cummings, who drove 400 kilometres from London to his parents' home in Durham, in northeast England, with his wife and son as he was coming down with COVID-19 at the end of March.
He told a news conference that said Cummings "followed the instincts of every father and every parent." Another Tory legislator, Steve Baker, said Cummings must resign for not "abiding by the spirit, at least, of the slogans which he has enforced on the rest of the country." Critics of the government expressed outrage that Cummings had broken strict rules that for two months have prevented Britons from visiting elderly relatives, comforting dying friends or even attending the funerals of loved ones. The opposition Labour Party has called for an official investigation.
Cummings is a key but contentious figure in Johnson's administration. A self-styled political disrupter who disdains the media and civil service, he was one of the architects of the successful campaign to take Britain out of the European Union, and orchestrated the Conservatives' decisive election victory in December.
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