Lies and denial didn’t work for Cummings, nor did the PM’s ill-conceived defence, so assume the ‘Be Kind’ campaign is a last-ditch attempt spearheaded by his PR team to deflect from his unjustified rule-breaking. Presumably they think that if we’re distracted enough, we’ll forget what actually happened. That trip, if any part of his wife’s article on their illness is accurate, put their child at serious risk. What sensible parent would get into a car when they’re supposedly extremely unwell and drive their small child across country? Not to mention later using them as the equivalent of a crash-test dummy - putting the child into a car yet again and driving them around when they thought their eyesight might actually be too dodgy to do it safely.
The drive to Durham also put other people’s families and children at risk, don’t forget it was at a time in the lockdown when driving long distances was restricted (and loads of other people were stopped by police and interrogated even on short journeys), because of the dangers of possibly needing roadside assistance, spreading the virus from one part of the country to another, and endangering anyone who came into contact with them on roadside stops. He didn’t even consider the risk he posed to his own parents in their 70s. The type of parents the rest of us were told to stay away from.
Not to mention when called on it, Cummings then tried to wriggle out of taking any responsibility for what he did by trying to use a loophole in the rules. A loophole intended to allow abuse victims to be able to leave their homes and go elsewhere. Other families were sticking to the rules, coping with children when ill, not seeing dying family or friends, staying indoors, even going without food rather than risk spreading the virus. What was so special about Cummings? He refuses to take any responsibility for his actions or apologise, he could have said, for example, my judgement was poor, I panicked, I’m sorry…he chose not to be accountable, so I’m glad that others are holding him to account.
He’s a public figure who basically pissed on the lockdown rules and by extension the millions of other people self-isolating and coping with far harder situations, and now he and Johnson are assuming we’re all too stupid or too forgetful to remember that what Cummings did was wrong.