Boris Johnson steps in at 5pm press conference to REFUSE to sack Dominic Cummings
Boris Johnson refused to bow to public and political pressure to sack Dominic Cummings tonight amid rising fury over multiple alleged lockdown breaches by the top Downing Street power-broker.
In a sign of the scope of the political crisis the Prime Minister faced television cameras for only the third time since his own brush with the killer pandemic to mount a broad-spectrum defence of his chief of staff at the end of a bruising weekend during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Johnson took the daily Downing Street news conference as a late replacement for Housing Minister Robert Jenrick, who himself has faced criticism for seeing out the lockdown at a home in Herefordshire, 170 miles from his Newark constituency.
But despite ten Tory backbenchers demanding the scalp of his closest adviser and the mastermind of the Brexit Vote Leave campaign, Mr Johnson backed the divisive Machiavellian figure of Mr Cummings over revelations he twice travelled 270 miles from London to Durham while the public were told to stay at home.
