Former Conservative MP Edwina Currie has said the reaction to Dominic Cummings’ breach of COVID-19 restrictions is an example of “mob rule.”

The UK Prime Minister’s senior adviser yesterday said he doesn’t regret travelling nearly 420km during the lockdown to visit his parents in Durham.

Mr Cummings said he made the trip to access childcare after both he and his wife began displaying COVID-19 symptoms.

On The Hard Shoulder this evening, Mrs Currie said she would have done the same thing in his place.

She said the pandemic has been a “long hard slog” and the public are “piling in on this man” because they are not clued up on the science around the virus but have an opinion on how people should behave during the lockdown.

“If I was in that situation where there were two of us with a small child and one of us was seriously ill and the other was worried sick about getting ill and the childcare was long way away, I think I would have piled into the car as well,” she said. “And actually, I think a lot of people did.”

She insisted that it “doesn’t matter what one person does or doesn’t do” during the lockdown.

“Most people in this country have understood what the problem is – what the contagion is, what the danger is – and have abided the rules of social distancing extremely well,” she said.

“It is only because of their behaviour and their determination that we are going to beat this thing and beat it together.

“It is nothing to do with one individual.”

Edwina Currie is seen at a school in Derbyshire, England in August 2019. Picture by: Joe Giddens/PA Archive/PA Images

She said both Ivan and herself had faced the same “kind of furore from the press” in their own political careers when they did something under pressure “that we knew to be right.”

“We have seen other colleagues being pilloried by the press,” she said. “It is mob rule and we should not put up with it in this country.

“We should be more intelligent and more thoughtful about that and there are far more important issues facing this country over the next six months.”

Edwina Currie gives a talk to the Nottingham Writers' Club in Trinity Square, Nottingham.

The former Derbyshire MP suggested much of the anger about the situation was coming from people who were opposed to leaving the EU.

“It may well be that a lot of the objection and a lot of the noise is coming from people who don’t want Brexit,” she said.

“Who see Cummings as the architect of Brexit – which to some extent he certainly was – who are still determined that they want to fight the last election once again.

“A lot of this is coming from a concerted group of people who are against the will of the British people.”

She said the public will have forgotten about the controversy by the time the next election rolls around.

You can listen back to the full conversation on The Hard Shoulder here.