After departing No. 10 through the front door in November 2020, Dominic Cummings was never going to disappear from the political limelight quietly.
A select committee appearance this week saw the former No. 10 adviser make a series of incendiary claims about the government’s pandemic response, including allegations that Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been “fired for at least 15, 20 things, including lying to everybody on multiple occasions”.
Hancock has denied Cummings’s allegations, insisting that he was “straight with people in public and in private” and describing the attacks against him as “unsubstantiated” during an appearance in the House of Commons.
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However, Boris Johnson’s former right-hand man claims to have kept the receipts from his time working in Downing Street, meaning the select committee appearance may be just the beginning of a clash with his former boss.
To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the pandemic, and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week:
Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?
Away from Westminster, the UK’s first rehabilitation centre for sufferers of long Covid opened its doors as speculation continues to mount about whether the spread of the India variant will delay the final step in England’s route out of restrictions.
The forced emergency landing of a Ryanair passenger jet in Belarus led to the arrest of a dissident journalist and prompted a muted response from the eastern European nation’s closest allies in Moscow.
A grand jury was convinced in New York to consider potential criminal charges against former president Donald Trump, his associates and his businesses. And in Syria, Bashar al-Assad won a fourth term following a “sham election” in which the president won 95.1% of the vote.
