Boris has joined Matt Hancock in jumping in front of the cameras to respond to Cummings’s evidence:

“This has been an incredibly difficult series of decisions, none of which we’ve taken lightly, and you’ve got to recognise that…when you go into a lockdown it’s a very very painful and traumatic thing for people…of course you’ve got to set that against the horrors of the pandemic, of Covid. At every stage, we’ve been governed by a determination to protect life, to save life, to ensure that our NHS is not overwhelmed. And we’ve followed, to the best we can, the data and the guidance that we’ve had.”

Most strongly, Boris says “Some of the commentary I have heard doesn’t bear any relation to reality.” There doesn’t seem to be any love lost for Boris amongst Tory MPs; it seems the only point of criticism is why he didn’t sack Cummings sooner…