Boris Johnson’s sister reveals who’s really in charge at Number 10

The Prime Minister’s sister says there is a ‘tight quartet of people’ in the cabinet taking ‘very big decisions’ that other ministers are only told of after they’ve been made.

Rachel Johnson has called Boris Johnson’s top aide Dominic Cummings a ‘rule-maker but not a rule-taker’ and says she would admit she had ‘messed up’ if she were him. It comes after the aide admitted driving 260 miles Durham with his son and symptomatic wife during lockdown and then taking another 60 mile round trip with his family to ‘test his eyesight’.

She told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘He’s been the architect of so many of the winning messages for the Vote Leave campaign for the Tory party in 2019, and therefore his approach to this is now being seen to have been in some way hypocritical. You know, he’s been a rule-maker but not a rule-taker, and it’s essentially very problematic.

‘Obviously everything is bigger than Dominic Cummings, the pandemic is bigger than Dominic Cummings, and as my brother says, nobody would have his unconditional support. I think that if I had been Cummings, I’d have admitted I’d messed up and I’d have got on the front foot and said, “I apologise for all of those who followed my messages, I took bad decisions at the time and I understand how angry it’s made a whole country feel, and please let’s move on because we have bigger fish to fry”.’

Yesterday leaders of six opposition parties wrote to the Prime Minister calling on him to sack his right hand man. They say there is ‘deep and genuine concern’ that Cummings’ actions have ‘severely undermined trust and confidence in public health advice’. A London police officer told LBC Radio that people are using the scandal as an excuse to break lockdown rules.

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He said he had handed out tickets to people ‘sitting on benches’ in parks – but now cannot see ‘how I can go to bed tonight, knowing that I’ve made people pay fines for breaching lockdown when it seems if you’re powerful and wealthy enough you can just do whatever you want.’

Cummings has maintained he did not break lockdown rules and said he made the trip to Durham to arrange childcare for his son in case he and his wife both became too unwell.

He says no options were available in London and that they stayed in a separate property on his parents’ farm.

Yesterday Health Secretary Matt Hancock indicated the Government could review cases where families have been fined for breaking lockdown rules in order to secure childcare.

Today the PM has allocated just 20 minutes for MPs to question him on his chief adviser’s actions as he appears before the Commons Liaison Committee.

So far, 30 Tory MPs have called for him to be sacked by Johnson, while senior ministers are reported to have privately demanded he go.

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Source: Metro News UK