The attached BBC News report from a year ago is quite a useful reminder of how the police were terrorising people for breach of COVID rules: two people fined £200 for going for a country walk five miles from their home with cups of tea regarded as illegal on the grounds that they were a picnic.

It becomes weirder and weirder that the police cannot see a conflict between the way they prosecuted (and are still prosecuting) pretty innocent people while at the same time regarding Downing Street as exempt. What were they thinking ? I can see that it is a bit tricky for the Chief of Police to tell the Prime Minister to behave. But the Cabinet Secretary ? And the Downing Street Head of HR who encouraged staff to leave by the back door ? What were they all thinking ?

I ask this having watched the Prime Minister be interviewed on Sky News about the North Shropshire by-election. It’s clear that he feels absolutely no responsibility or culpability whatsoever, not a scintilla of awareness that he might be personally in any way to blame. It’s the same as the look of absolute gormlessness when people objected to Dominic Cummings going home to Durham. A lifetime of getting away with things has left him startlingly ill prepared to accept responsibility for things going wrong as they so obviously are at the moment.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55560814