Cummeth the hour

The ordnance left in the Alamo that is No 10 is dwindling.  It's difficult to believe that at the start of the Bank Holiday weekend, Boris, Dom, Isaac and Lee wanted to deploy the joyous news of the return of English non-food shopping via a standard Downing Street briefing on the Monday. There was, at that stage, no threat to Paddington 2; no need for the BBC to deploy Huw Edwards and Laura Kuenssburg from days off, as well as the existing rota of correspondents and presenters; no need to cable up the No 10 rose garden.

Mr Cummings ran late. Perhaps he was getting his written statement legalled. The BBC's Vicki Young, patiently and calmly, talked for 20 minutes, in an BAFTA-deserving performance, as presenter Ben Brown asked increasingly fatuous questions.

The Q&A session with Cummings was reminiscent of games in "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue", in which the words "I'm", "sorry", "I was", "wrong" must never appear together.

For the thinking Tory backbenchers with access to, and basic knowledge of, Twitter, the central response had been planned. This detailed account of the same wrong-headed and deliberate busting of the guidelines made it all ok; time to move on.

The detailed account gave many more of us the opportunity to judge the qualities of the man at the heart of this Government. A man who re-writes blogs to demonstrate his omniscience. A man who's reluctant to put on fresh t-shirts and jogging trousers for work at the heart of Government. A man who's sorting out vaccines, investment in the NHS, and chooses which important decisions he bothers the Prime Minister with, every hour of every day.  A man who didn't even offer to resign in the middle of all this mess.