There’s something extraordinarily banal about people’s reaction to this ‘crisis’. People on the left decry Cummings reckless folly, while people on the right decry the left for decrying it. Reality exists squarely in the middle. We could all leave our residences and do whatever the hell we want to. The simple fact is that some of us choose to and some of us don’t and that doesn’t come down to feeling exempt from any law or a sense of entitlement; it comes from what feels right to us. Individual people see the world through individual filters.
In my mind Cummings leaving his property for child care reasons is no different from Neil Ferguson seeing his lover for personal reasons. Neither were necessary and both had risks attached. The difference is one man was used as a scape goat and forced to resign and the other refuses to and feels (and states) that he acted within the law. I don’t remember people outside of the media decrying Ferguson to such a degree though. Perhaps instead of calling Cummings to step down they should be calling for the reinstatement of Ferguson if the rules are so fluid now?
In reality though, people need to come to terms with the fact that people who exist outside of their own body are their own people. Not everyone is you and you are not everyone. Could you imagine if every single person who broke the rules was put through the ringer like this? For every small infraction? Every 2m rule broken attracted this clamour? Rule breakers exist on the left and the right of the political spectrum just as they do in any other field. People just need to get over the fact it’s someone they don’t hold up as a saint’s turn this time.
The tabloids are like sharks. If there is blood in the water they don't care who they maim. Better one resignation than a whole load of lives ruined.
The story died. Everyone gets to go on with their lives, including the children. We're still too prurient a society for somebody other than Dominic Cummings to flick a finger and say 'so what?'