It was an extraordinary day in British politics. A rain of fire. A grenade. A “Domshell”. Dominic Cummings’ seven-hour performance before Westminster MPs on Wednesday filled the UK front pages on Thursday, with his condemnation of Boris Johnson’s handling of the pandemic dominating headlines. The Guardian leads with Cummings’ devastating accusation that “tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die” during the Covid outbreak in Britain, above a triptych of faces the ousted aide made during the hearing. The Guardian also carried analysis by political editor Heather Stewart calling the hearing self-serving but plausible.
The Independent, the i and the Mirror use the same quote for their splashes. The Independent described the hearing as “painting a picture of disarray in No. 10, as the PM said he wanted to be like the ‘mayor of Jaws’ who kept the beach open despite shark attacks”:
“Chaos and complacency”, writes the i, calling the evidence “devastating”. The front page quotes a senior official as saying, “We’re f***ked” – a reference to what Cummings alleges deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara said in March 2020.
The Mirror’s headline appears over a photo of the PM with his head hanging, titled “Johnson’s shame” and captioned “PM in crisis after explosive claims”.
The Telegraph takes a different tack, labelling the accusations from Cummings as “revenge”. Johnson booted his top adviser in November last year following allegations that he had briefed against the PM. “Sources last night raised questions over his motives,” the Telegraph writes, “suggesting the public would see him as bitter”. The paper throws forward to Thursday, when the government will “attempt to fight back” as the health secretary, Matt Hancock, answers questions in the House of Commons before holding a press conference. The Sunday Telegraph editor, Alistair Heath, argues that “Slowly but surely, the side-effects of the lockdown and of the pandemic itself will become more salient, and the death toll itself less so”, in a comment piece titled “Covid could yet destroy Johnson. But not in the way Cummings expects”.
The Daily Express calls Cummings’ performance a “tirade”, with the headline: “Yes, mistakes were made but this was pure revenge”. The paper quotes “allies” of the PM calling Cummings “vengeful and embittered”.
The Sun takes the prime minister’s corner as well, mocking up its headline as an optometrist’s chart that says in diminishing point size: “Do you need a hindsight test, Mr Cummings?” The paper reports a backlash against Cummings, saying: “Last night a former colleague branded him a ‘disingenuous little f*****’”.
The Times says “Cummings rains fire on No 10”. It, too, quotes an unnamed government source’s claim that Cummings “was motivated by revenge and that his comments represented a ‘character assassination’ that was not backed by evidence”. The front page comment calls the hearing “primal chaos, as molten and Sicilian as anything disgorged by Mount Etna” and “longer and bloodier than Hamlet”. “Only in England could a major health ding-dong include a cameo for a Jack Russell” – a reference to Cummings saying that the PM and his girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, distracted the PM from the pandemic because she was “going completely crackers” about press coverage of their dog.
The FT and the Yorkshire Post take their headlines from Cummings’ one-word response – “No” – when asked whether the prime minister was a fit and proper person to lead the country through the pandemic:
The Daily Record’s headline is “Blood on your hands”, beside a photo of the prime minister. The paper’s story on the hearing takes up no fewer than pages “4,5,6,7,8&9”.
The Daily Mail – and sister paper Metro – are peerless in the pun department, with “Domshell”. Its front page also brands the PM “shopping trolley Boris”, after Cummings portrayed Johnson as making constant U-turns “like a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other”.
The Scotsman sums up the spectacle as “The Cummings Grenade”, including in its main dot points Cummings’ assertion that SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon undermined the four-nations response to the pandemic. Cummings said in the hearings, “As soon as you had these meetings Nicola Sturgeon would just go straight out announce what she wanted straight afterwards,” and called the meetings “Potemkin”.
In other coverage, former justice secretary David Gauke said in an appearance on BBC Newsnight: “It strikes me that with Dominic Cummings you’re either brilliant or you’re useless and clearly he’s consigned Matt Hancock to the second category. That’s not my experience.” Asked by Emily Maitlis whether Cummings’ apology for lives lost meant Johnson should apologise, too, Gauke said: “Well I think it probably does and I think it’s very difficult for the government to argue that these are matters that should only be looked at in due course after an enquiry.”