On Tuesday 31 October, Dominic Cummings returned as if from the dead for his usual performance. He was giving evidence on the 15th day of the Covid inquiry into how government decisions were made during the pandemic. This is what he does now, and has done for more than two years – on the BBC, in front of MPs, and on his own Substack: he runs over an increasingly distant past in a bid to restore a long-destroyed reputation.
At the Covid inquiry, held in an unremarkable building in Paddington, he faced his least sympathetic interlocutor yet: Hugo Keith KC. The pair presented two models of a man. Cummings was, as ever, unkempt, slumped in his chair in a crumpled white shirt with the top button undone, his black tie loose, his hands invariably crossed, or on his head, or holding his face. Keith, in contrast, was a picture of British propriety: dark, tailored suit; Windsor-knotted pink tie; crisp white shirt; expensive watch; a poppy lapel already on display in October.
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