On 26 May Dominic Cummings will give evidence to MPs grouped on the health and science super committee, chaired by @Jeremy_Hunt and @GregClarkMP. This will be box office politically, because - as I have mentioned - Cummings will prosecute Johnson and his scientific...
advisers for failing to lock down early enough in March 2020 and Johnson (and Sunak) though not the scientists for failing to lock down in early September (not late September). But the Tory controlled committee will not allow him to use them to humiliate the PM in...
other ways (though some might say the charge that the PM put thousands lives at risk by refusing to lock down is humiliating enough). The committee’s members expect Cummings to give them a massive “dump” of papers and data. “We will sift through what...
he gives us, keep the stuff relevant to our investigation into lesson learned from the [Covid19] crisis and will hand the rest back”. Which is all very well. But a question is begged about who exactly will sift Cummings’s evidence, and having read whatever resonant...
revelations he makes, will they be able to delete the compelling information from their brains?
PS to explain, Cummings believed the data justified locking down from early September onward. The PM - backed by @RishiSunak - refused his urgent entreaties to do so. In late September the Scientific Advisory Committee for Emergencies made its formal request for a...
circuit-breaking lockdown, which was also rejected by Johnson and Sunak.

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More from @Peston

28 Apr
I understand that @BorisJohnson's first conversations about having the Downing Street flat funded by donors were as long ago as February 2020. At the time Ben Elliot, joint chairman of the party suggested the PM borrow to pay the costs. The PM then came up with the idea...
of a blind trust, again funded by donors. But the Cabinet Office could not sort the proprieties. According to an email leaked to the Daily Mail, the Tory donor Lord Brownlow then contributed £58,000 "to cover the payments the party has already made on behalf of the soon...
to be formed 'Downing Street Trust'" - which was never formed. The Tory Party had seemingly already paid back the Cabinet Office for the decorating bills it had paid on the PM's behalf. And the PM has now paid back the Tory Party. We don't know when the...
Read 6 tweets
28 Apr
.@DUPleader will inevitably resign soon, in the face of the coup against her. What happens next will have huge significance in respect of Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK - because Arlene Foster made the judgement (which feels right) that the way to keep the DUP a...
credible political force was to move it to the centre ground, especially on social issues, whereas those who oppose her do so on the grounds of religious fundamentalism. Or to put it another way, the DUP is at a momentous cross roads. Will it choose a new leader that will...
return NI’s biggest unionist party to religious sectarianism, and arguably thereby drive large numbers of unaligned voters to Sinn Fein, or will the new leader continue Foster’s drive to reposition the DUP as a centrist party of unionism? What happens matters not only to...
Read 4 tweets
27 Apr
Downing St has for the third time in five days put out a statement that is irrelevant to the central question, which is how long @BorisJohnson borrowed tens of thousands of pounds to pay for redecorating and refurbishing his Downing St home. This is all increasingly...
weird. I asked Downing St why they bothered to put it out and was told “because we have”. Here is the statement (again). ‘A No 10 spokesperson said: “Any costs of wider refurbishment this year beyond...
those provided for by the annual allowance have been met by the Prime Minister personally. Conservative Party funds are not being used for this.”’ As I said, this ducks the only important questions which are how long the PM borrowed from the Tory party, was it an
Read 4 tweets
26 Apr
I'm understand CCHQ (Tory Party) made payment to the Cabinet Office to cover initial costs of refurbishing the PM's home in Downing Street, and the PM is now repaying CCHQ. There is an audit trail. Cabinet Sec Simon Case knows about it. Which is presumably why he told MPs...
today that he would do a report on the propriety of how the decoration and furnishing was funded. This is breaking news and I will update
Downing Street says to me - again - that the PM has now paid for the costs of the refurbishment. But there was a loan to him from the Tory Party. And I assume that loan will now have to be declared by him. You decide whether it was appropriate for his party to give...
Read 6 tweets
14 Apr
.@BorisJohnson's deputy chief of staff, Baroness [Simone] Finn, has retained her shareholding of between 25% and 50% in Francis Maude Associates, a consultancy that advises governments, although she has resigned as a director. When I asked Downing Street about this, a...
spokesman said: “Baroness Finn has declared all her relevant interests to the House of Lords, and in addition, complied with the Cabinet Office requirements for special advisers to declare outside interests.The Cabinet Office has a formal process to avoid...
conflicts of interest arising from such declared interests.” All I would point out is that perceived conflicts of interests can be as damaging for confidence in government as actual conflicts of interest. And if Francis Maude Associates takes on new business with this...
Read 5 tweets
16 Mar
There is an an enormous amount of noise around the apparent statement in the government's "Integrated Review" that the government is increasing its stockpile of nuclear warheads by more than a third. But a close reading of what it says shows NO SUCH commitment at all...
What the document says is "in 2010 the Government stated an intent to reduce our overall nuclear warhead stockpile ceiling from not more than 225 to not more than 180 by the mid-2020s. However, in recognition of the evolving security environment, including the...
developing range of technological and doctrinal threats, this is no longer possible, and the UK will move to an overall nuclear weapon stockpile of no more than 260 warheads". To be clear, the current stockpile of nuclear weapons is unknown. It is a state secret. But whatever...
Read 6 tweets

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