Newsnight

Sarah Smith did a couple of editions last week, was that her first time or had she done it before?

Sarah Smith did a couple of editions last week, was that her first time or had she done it before?

Durham Police have confirmed that Dominic Cummings did breach the rules, so what Emily Maitlis said has been fully justified in my opinion.

Durham police said on Friday that they had spoken to Dominic Cummings directly about breaking the guidelines, on Wednesday they changed their story to only speaking to his father about security.....

They've literally just announced that he did indeed breach the guidelines.

They've literally just announced that he did indeed breach the guidelines.

The actual wording is " might have been a minor breach of the Regulations" which is far from saying he definitively broke the law. In any case it would be extremely worrying and newsworthy in itself if a police force started seeing themselves as judge and jury rather than just investigators of crime.

Let's face it: the Durham police wording has been toned right down so as not to provoke a reaction from the Government. That statement is effectively 'we believe he broke the rules but we don't want to rock the boat'. He clearly broke the rules as they were communicated at the start of the lockdown and to suggest otherwise is folly. Maitlis' statement was factual.

I consider myself educated, I read the rules as they were stated at the time of the lockdown and I followed them. At no point did I consider it right to drive 30 miles to 'test my eyesight' or sit down outside for 15 minutes. The only time I left my home was to shop for essentials as infrequently as possible and for a brief period of exercise once a day, on foot, starting and ending at home. We all know those were the rules as they were set out at the start of the lockdown and it's clear Cummings didn't adhere to them.

Maybe the bigger problem here is that there are so many different interpretations of those rules - if people didn't understand them, that's another failing of the Government to add to the list. If by some miracle Cummings was right to act as he did then clearly the Government's communication of the lockdown rules was unclear to the vast majority of people. Either way it comes back to Cummings and Boris.

The annoying part of this for me is not that he broke the rules. I can live with that - we're all human and driven by impulse and instinct. Nobody's perfect. What I cannot abide is how Boris and Cummings have handled this in the aftermath. A simple acknowledgement that Cummings had breached the rules and an apology was all that was needed. He needn't have resigned over something so minor, despite the hypocrisy. I could have lived with that. What I absolutely cannot stand is the denials, outright lies and an attitude in government of 'we know best and we don't care what you think'. They think we're mugs. It's the outright arrogance that sticks in my craw. Who do these people think they are? The only saving grace in all this is that people like that get their comeuppance one day. If you wait long enough, it will happen, believe me.