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Firstly an apology. I was totally wrong when I predicted yesterday that the Dom Cummings appearance today before MPs would be a damp squib and would not live up to its billing.

In fact the event broadcast live for several hours was at times totally compelling and we learned a fair bit about how Johnson’s Number 10 worked and what the dynamics were. It will be referred to many times in the future.

We underestimated Cummings whose testimony was reinforced by his readiness to accept blame for the errors he might have made in the effort to manage COVID last year. That set a tone that gave more credence to his comments about the PM and more particularly HealthSec Hancock.

Although Cummings thinks that Johnson should go his particular points over Hancock appeared to be very damning and my guess is that the HealthSec will struggle to shake them off. He’s now 25% betting favourite tobe the next out.

On a general level a big political factor about the testimony is that it gets us back to the start of the pandemic highlighting suggestions that many more people died, perhaps tens of thousands, because Johnson was late in bringing in lockdown. It gets the subject off the vaccination programme which is very positive for the government.

Mike Smithson