Ann Widdecombe urges people to ignore lockdown rules

Ann Widdecombe telling Piers Morgan that 'young and healthy' Britons should use public transport to get to work; ITV player - Credit: Archant

STEVE ANGLESEY reports on another Brexiteer that doesn’t think the rules apply to her.

ANN WIDDECOMBE

The former Brexit Party MEP, 72, told Daily Express readers they should ignore the government’s lockdown rules. She wrote: ‘What we need is a simple message, advising us all, young and old alike, to use our common sense and to shield those with health conditions… but otherwise to do anything that is necessary to get the country moving again.

‘Common sense is the message that Boris Johnson originally wanted to get over… So, Boris, from June 1, I shall apply my own judgment and I hope everybody else does the same.’ I’m struggling to count here, but is it now one rule for Dominic Cummings, one rule for Ann and her followers and one rule for everyone else?

Michael Gove answers questions on Dominic Cummings. Photograph: LBC. – Credit: Archant

MICHAEL GOVE

Gove’s defence of Dominic Cummings was an unmitigated disaster. Not only did he incorrectly declare the famous Barnard Castle trip on April 12 was OK as government guidelines allowed driving for exercise (that wasn’t Cummings’ excuse for the journey and driving for exercise was only okayed on May 10), Gove also attempted to claim that he too had hopped in the car to test his eyesight.

Gove told LBC: ‘I have on occasions in the past, erm, driven with, erm, er, my wife in order to make sure that, er, er, (exhales) what’s the right way of putting it?’ before being laughed off by presenter Nick Ferrari. At least he stopped short of saying that his old Vote Leave chum was right to avoid optician ‘experts’.


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DARREN GRIMES

When Scotland’s chief medical officer Catherine Calderwood resigned on April 5 after admitting visiting her family’s second home, lucky Vote Leave postcode lottery winner Grimes fumed: ‘Those who make the rules cannot be found breaking the rules. The quickest way to lose public trust in the official advice.’

When Dominic Cummings was found to have driven 260 miles to one of his family’s homes, Grimes was entirely consistent. ‘It’s time for most of the media and the Left to be honest about their true motives behind the hounding of Cummings and his child’s family home,’ he wrote. ‘This is actually breaking my heart. The media are monsters. Utter monsters.’ All this came between plugs for Darren’s new website, which hilariously is called Reasoned.

TOM HARWOOD

No-one defended the prime minister’s special adviser more stridently than previously obscure Guido Fawkes hack Harwood, who told Sky News ‘Dominic Cummings has made huge sacrifices’ and was being persecuted ‘just because he’s not a people person’. That chimed completely with Harwood’s previously expressed views on professor Neil Ferguson, who resigned from SAGE after admitting his lover had visited his home (‘The man most responsible for locking everyone up has been breaking the rules he told us to follow. Prick’).

Meanwhile, geeks have noted that while Harwood posted a Twitter message on April 7 which the accompanying data suggests was from ‘Lambeth, London’, his recent TV appearances have come from Cambridge. Did he drive there to test his eyes?