Cummings up again. He says the "whole impetus" of the Government over the summer was to "pretend' everything was back to normal. Govt's biggest concern was economy. But on Sept 21, despite warnings fr scientists/ officials on need to lockdown, PM concluded "not to do anything".
Cummings claims that PM refused to take advice on September lockdown.
"He wasn't taking any advice. He was making the decisions himself. The Cabinet wasn't involved… There wasn't any formal Cabinet meeting to discuss it. Or if there was, it was a purely Potemkin exercise.”
Cummings claims that Boris Johnson didn't take health risks of Covid seriously - and thought economic harm to country was more damaging.
"There's this great misunderstanding because it nearly killed him that he must take it seriously..."
💥Dominic Cummings confirms Boris Johnson *did* say he would rather see "bodies pile high" than take the country into a third lockdown, as revealed BBC.
The Prime Minister said last month it was “total, total rubbish” that he said those words.
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Dominic Cummings asked about our story on him breaking lockdown rules driving 260 miles to Durham.
"That whole episode was definitely a major disaster for the Government and for the Covid policy".
Cummings says he left London over security threats. Says he made a "terrible mistake" by not explaining that to public.
"What I said was true, but I left out a crucial part of it all. The whole thing was a complete disaster. It undermined public confidence in the whole thing".
Jeremy Hunt says - rightly - that it was terrible that Cummings' family faced security threats.
But asks: "If you were moving your family out for security reasons, why did you move them back?"
DC says he felt Govt needed him - and would've left wife/ child in Durham if he cld
Dominic Cummings starts with mea culpa. “The truth is senior ministers, officials & advisers like me fell short of standards the public has a right to expect. When the public needed us most, we failed. I’d like to say to all the families how sorry I am for the mistakes we made”.
Cummings says there were conversations in No 10 about pandemic in first weeks of January.
He had a "general chat" with PM on Covid in middle of Jan and texted Matt Hancock to check on plans on Jan 25. But he says those preparations turned out to be "hollow".
Cummings says No 10 was not on a "war-footing" on the pandemic in February.
"A lot of key people were literally skiing in February... the PM went on holiday for two weeks".
He says "sense of urgency" only apparent in the last week of that month.
A year since we revealed Dominic Cummings' lockdown-busting trip to County Durham at the height of the first wave, he prepares to deliver explosive testimony to MPs on how the Government handled the pandemic. mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…
It marks the culmination of the collapse of one of the most influential political relationship of modern times which - as @ShippersUnbound says - "began to disintegrate in the week that Cummings had to account for his car journey north." thetimes.co.uk/article/danger…
Cummings has already said he is prepared to hand over a key document on Covid decision-making in government - and will no doubt have plenty of texts, WhatsApp messages and even recordings to back up his account of what went wrong.
Keir Starmer is addressing Labour party staff - telling them they put their "heart and soul" into campaign and he is "proud" of them.
But he admits there's no hiding the "bitter disappointment" of results - partic Hartlepool. "I share that".
Starmer tells staff he is "incredibly proud and delighted" of Mark Drakeford's Welsh result & "really pleased" with Anas Sarwar's campaign in Scotland.
"The victories for metro mayors, in councils we won and in Wales shows the difference we can make in power".
Starmer: We're still too internally focused - not good enough yet at focusing on voters. We've been losing elections for 11 yrs. We'll be spelling out what a post-pandemic, post-austerity Britain outside EU looks like. Labour is going to be about going forward to something better