By defending Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson is betraying the trust of first-time Conservative voters

Editorial: The prime minister seems to have miscalculated the strength of public feeling, which is surprising given that the 10 Downing Street operation run by Mr Cummings often boasts of the speed and sophistication of its daily opinion polling

The prime minister has done his government lasting damage with his defence of Cummings (10 Downing Street/AFP via Getty)

We tried to warn the prime minister. The Independent said last weekend that Dominic Cummings had to furlough himself if Boris Johnson were to keep the authority he needed to lead the nation out of lockdown.

Instead, the prime minister defended him on Sunday and Mr Cummings himself gave a long account of himself on Monday. Neither attempt to justify and explain Mr Cummings’s trip to the north of England cut much ice with the British people, who remain overwhelmingly of the view that Mr Cummings broke the lockdown rules and that Mr Johnson operates a double standard by keeping him in his post.

By this weekend, the headlines had (mostly) moved on, but the public’s anger had not. As we report today from the “red wall” – the former Labour heartland of northern England and north Wales – those voters who entrusted the Conservatives with their support for the first time feel particularly let down.

“It’s all I’ve been getting asked about,” Nadeem Ahmed, leader of the Conservative group on Wakefield City Council, told The Independent. He said: “It’s probably the only time I’ve been glad of isolation – because it means I’m not having to answer for what he did out on the street too.”

Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings probably assumed that if they held the line the public anger would subside and within a few weeks the fuss would be forgotten. Mr Ahmed disagreed: “For every person who couldn’t go to the funeral of someone they love, they’ll remember this guy. And I’ll tell you what else: that anger will still be there in the voting booth.”

The prime minister seems to have miscalculated the strength of public feeling, which is surprising given that the 10 Downing Street operation run by Mr Cummings often boasts of the speed and sophistication of its daily opinion polling. Maybe Mr Johnson assumed that the outcry over Mr Cummings’s Durham trip was incited by the Remainer media, which still hadn’t forgiven him for Brexit.

He and Mr Cummings were determined not to give an inch, which was why there was no hint of an apology in Mr Cummings’s statement, and assumed that when the facts were laid out in what was in effect a direct broadcast to the nation, the nation would see through what they said were the media’s lies.

That was a serious error of judgement. Mr Johnson has, as a result, failed the test he set himself when he visited Sedgefield, Tony Blair’s old seat and one of the Conservatives’ most symbolic victories, the day after the election. He said: “I want the people of the northeast to know that we in the Conservative Party and I will repay your trust – and everything that we do, everything that I do as your prime minister, will be devoted to repaying that trust.”

He thought that meant delivering Brexit and spending more on public services, but he should have realised that it also meant responding to unexpected challenges in ways that retained the trust of those people who voted Conservative for the first time. The prime minister has done his government lasting damage and will pay the price when people return to the voting booth.