Just one more thing...

No doubt the assembled hacks in the Rose Garden behind 10 Downing Street were all waiting for their Columbo moment. Either that or they're all as fawning and obsequious as Laura Kuenssberg and Robert Peston, who both seemed to play pat-a-cake with their prime-position questions to the man-in-chief, the power behind Johnson's throne and Machiavellian puppet-master Mr Cummings.



I'll spare them that. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. And ask, on their behalf...



1. Why Cummings wife, Mary Wakefield, didn't either drive or take a share of the driving if the journey back to London was a worry?



2. Why Cummings didn't just catch the train? There's a mainline station at Durham. Once he was cleared for work he could've been off on the 0620 and in the office a few hours later. Failing that, him being so important and all, why didn't he call for a ministerial car? A military helicopter? Thunderbird 3? He's clearly so pivotal to government strategy (he said so himself this afternoon, many times) they'd have chartered a private jet for him if he'd asked!



3. And why was it necessary for Mary and Dominic Jr to accompany him back to the capital anyway, to a house he'd already said he'd 'fled' when falling ill as it was being 'targeted' by all-and-sundry? If his family farm was such a safe place, why not leave his wife and child in safety there, to convalesce? No need for dodgy outings on your wife's birthday to Barnard Castle, possible pit stops for refuelling on the A1 southbound and unscheduled wee-stops in a wood. Just Dom, in a carriage on his own, on the train.



Oh and one more thing...



All that guff about 'other people maybe not agreeing' with his actions is fine up to a point, with an elected politician. Because we can vote them out if we don't believe them at the next election. But we're stuck with Cummings until Boris tires of him or decides he's a political liability or something.