Remarkably, Dominic Cummings has used his Substack to deny that the Guardian photo of him with the PM and Carrie was a party of any sort. He claims he’d had several meeting at that table that day, with the gathering wrapping up at roughly 6-6.30pm. Guido knows how much Dom cares about credit, so sign up to his Substack here.

“The PM and I continued talking as it broke up. Someone brought a bottle of wine out to the table. It may have been [the PM’s PPS] but I think it was the PM himself who went inside as I was packing stuff up and brought out wine. We carried on chatting about covid, about domestic priorities, and about how to sort out the Cabinet Office which had totally collapsed.”

Cummings acknowledges that while no one has been more critical of Carrie than him, she wasn’t breaking the rules in the photo, because it was her own garden and she was free to do as she pleased. He says that, according to his phone, he left No. 10 shortly after the picture was taken at 19.15. 

Despite the above defence, Dom argues “there was a social event May 2020 that should not have happened”. He claims that on the Wednesday after the Guardian photo, a senior No. 10 official invited people to a “socially distanced drinks” in the garden. Despite Cummings and another SpAd pointing out this was against the rules they were ignored and went home, although the event “definitely happened”. He claims he argued to the PM that the officials who organised it should have been sacked that summer…

Sounds like Pippa’s Christmas has just come late…