In the aftermath of the Dominic Cummings affair, I have just read something so extraordinarily distasteful, I feel that I need to draw attention to it just in case it gets lost in the general noise.

I found it pretty distasteful that the Mail on Sunday had chosen to rake up some not very bad muck about the retired chemistry teacher who had reported the fact that Dominic Cummings had been on a day out in Barnard Castle – namely that he had gone to collect his daughter after lockdown rules had changed, as if this was somehow the equivalent of a senior person in government driving to a second home with Covid-19 when both were expressly forbidden. I also found it odd that Boris Johnson was quoted as being ‘miffed’ that the British public was so angry – an oddly Billy Bunter-ish expression for a Prime Minister in the face of a national disaster.

It turns out that the article in question was written by Carrie Symonds’s ex-boyfriend, Harry Cole. Which makes it sound as if the Prime Minister asked his girlfriend to make sure that the retired chemistry teacher’s life was made hell as an act of petty, spiteful revenge. Well, it would be in character, wouldn’t it ? I will lock my door tonight.