59% of Britons say PM’s adviser Cummings MUST GO after lockdown violations, as pressure builds on Johnson

A new opinion poll shows a sizeable majority of the British public think Dominic Cummings – Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s special adviser – should be ditched, following revelations he broke coronavirus lockdown rules.

The YouGov survey published on Tuesday found that 59 percent of people think Cummings should go, up from 52 percent before his poorly received statement from Downing Street’s rose garden on Monday. 

It’s the latest sign that the British public has been left unconvinced by his convoluted explanation as to why he and his family traveled around 260 miles (418 km) across England to his parents’ estate during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic at the end of March.

Furthermore, 71 percent of respondents believe Cummings broke lockdown rules – up 3 percentage points since the press conference. In what could alarm Tory and Brexit supporters – including Cummings, who was a chief architect of the UK’s exit from the EU – some 52 percent of ‘Leave’ voters think the time is up for Johnson’s key aide.

The poll release comes after 25 Conservative MPs called for the 48-year-old to resign or be sacked. Earlier on Tuesday, Douglas Ross became the first government minister to quit his role in protest. 

Ross – posting his resignation letter on social media – claimed that some of his constituents had not been able to say “goodbye to loved ones” and were not allowed to “mourn together” as a family during the coronavirus pandemic. Consequently, he could not “in good faith tell them they were all wrong and one senior adviser to the government was right.”

Cummings has defended his trip, claiming that it counted as essential travel and related to childcare issues, even though he himself was displaying Covid-19 symptoms.

During the press conference, he was confronted over allegations he and his family took a trip to Barnard Castle – 30 miles away from where they were staying in Durham. Cummings insisted this journey was undertaken to “test his eyesight” before driving back to London, an explanation that has received widespread ridicule and outrage from people across the political spectrum.

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