A former Downing Street press secretary has labelled the Conservative Party leadership the “biggest bunch of elitist scumbags that have ever been near power.”
It comes after the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended his top aide Dominic Cummings over his breach of COVID-19 lockdown rules.
Mr Johnson claimed his adviser had acted “responsibly, legally and with integrity” when he travelled nearly 420km to visit his parents in Durham.
Mr Cummings has said he made the trip so his parents could help look after his children after he and his wife began displaying COVID-19 symptoms.
On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, Tony Blair’s former spokesman and strategist, Alastair Campbell, said that you “can’t believe a word they say.”
He said: “They have changed their story in a several directions already.
“They are now trying to put it around that the son has some sort of medical condition that meant that he could only be looked after by people with whom he was familiar.
“I have no idea if that is true but frankly, I don’t think it matters.
“The whole country was being asked, until we were blue in the face, to stay at home, to protect the NHS and to save lives. He didn’t and what’s more he knew he was in breach [of the regulations].”
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson chairs a COVID-19 press conference at 10 Downing Street, 24-05-2020. Image: Andrew Parsons/DPA/PA ImagesHe said the failure to hold Mr Cummings to account for his actions would make a mockery of the lockdown – and potentially lead to thousands more deaths in the coming weeks.
“What is pathetic is that – fair play, there are some Tory MPs who are discovering they have got a spine – but if not one single member of the cabinet today when they meet on Zoom is prepared to say to Johnson, 'your indifference and complacency and incompetence helped to kill tens of thousands of people in Phase One of this, are you really prepared to help to kill tens of thousands more by effectively busting your own lockdown with the argument being that, if you love your kids you can do what the hell you want?'" he said.
A political campaign video of the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson Boris Johnson on display outside Dominic Cummings’ North London home, 24-05-2020. Image: Victoria Jones/PA Wire/PA ImagesHe noted that the UK is full of heart-breaking stores about people who have not been able to visit loved ones as they were dying.
"It is horrific what people have had to go through and this guy thinks it doesn’t apply to him,” he said.
“What gets in my craw about these people is that they got into power by pretending to be for the people against the elite.
“They are the biggest bunch of elitist scumbags that have ever been near power.”
He warned that the situation gives out a 'do as I say, not as I do' message which could lead to a breakdown in democracy.
“The point I keep trying to make to people is that we have seen how quickly Donald Trump has managed to debase American politics,” he said
“We all sit around and say isn’t terrible what Viktor Orban is going in Hungary and what the Polish Government have done in terms of destroying people’s basic liberties.
“Once you have a breakdown of the fundamental principle that the law applies equally to all, you no longer have functioning democratic society – that is how big this is.”
