Twitter bursts with memes as Dominic Cummings provides evidence to MPs on Government Covid-19 effort

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Social media is awash this afternoon with thousands of memes mocking Dominic Cummings, Matt Hancock and the rest of government, after bombshell evidence on the Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic was released earlier today.

Mr Cummings, 49, was providing a long-awaited report to a cross committee of MPs on the Government’s response to the first months of coronavirus pandemic. 

But while the former special advisor to the Prime Minister was addressing MPs, social media users were busy crafting memes and jokes in the wake of his evidence. 

Mr Cummings came under fire after he posted a picture of an extremely detailed, supposed Pandemic Plan B, on a whiteboard on Twitter this morning – with some ridiculing it as nothing more than ‘sixth-form notes’.

And thousands more poked fun at his laid back appearance, while others compared him to the BBC character Mr Blobby as #DominicCummings trended online.

Speaking today, the outspoken political figure lambasted Prime Minister Boris Johnson and senior Cabinet figures over their handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Dominic Cummings gave an extraordinary account of the Government response to Covid today – revealing that Boris Johnson viewed it as a ‘scare story’ just a month before the first national lockdown and describing the dramatic moment when a top civil servant admitted: ‘We are absolutely f*****.’ 

While he addressed MPs, thousands of social media users were mocking his every word.

Boris Johnson’s maverick former chief aide claimed he warned No10’s original plan was heading for catastrophe and could throw the NHS into chaos with up to 4,000 people dying of Covid every day, and the scribbled brainstorm after this realisation contained the chilling question: ‘Who do we not save?’

In hope of managing the inevitable onslaught, Mr Cummings and other advisers to the PM drew up a tougher plan which introduced the serious prospect of forcing people not to leave their homes to stop the virus spreading – the type of lockdown seen in China had originally been rejected by Downing Street.

Mr Cummings said the scrawled brainstorm on a whiteboard had been drawn up in Boris Johnson’s study on Friday, March 13, 2020, and then shown to the PM the next day.

After an earlier tweet appearing this timeline in the run up to the first lockdown, some social media users compared the Pandemic Plan B to ‘sixth-form notes on a whiteboard’.

As #DominicCummings was going viral, one user compared his entrance to the select committee chamber to that of Mr Blobby.

Others mocked his laid back appearance,  comparing him to a divorced father at a soft play centre ‘who has just been told his kid has s*** in the pool’.

A tweet posted by Cummings on the Government’s detailed timelines were also compared to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Charlie Day.  

The maverick former No10 chief said the government – and he personally – ‘fell disastrously short’ in its response to coronavirus during a titanic hearing with MPs on coronavirus. 

He also said on the evening of March 13 the second most senior civil servant at the Cabinet Office, Helen MacNamara, came in and relayed to him the view of another senior official that ‘there is no plan’ and ‘we’re in huge trouble’. 

Mr Cummings said she warned him that thousands could die and that ‘we are absolutely f*****’.

Mr Cummings conceded he should have been ‘hitting the panic button’ in mid-February but he had been ‘wrongly reassured’ by messages from the WHO and others about the situation in China. 

The former chief adviser is delivering four hours of testimony to a joint session of the Commons health and science committees in which he is handing a bruising to his former friend and boss. 

Mr Cummings is expected to be accused by Tory MPs of using today’s appearance to ‘avenge’ his sacking in November after he lost a power struggle with Ms Symonds.

But Labour will seize on the claims as evidence that Mr Johnson could have done more to save lives.

The committee of cross-party MPs heard a slew of damaging allegations, including that even in the first half of March Mr Johnson was still of the view that the threat to the economy was more significant than the public health risk. 

Mr Cummings alleged the Prime Minister regarded the pandemic as a ‘scare story’ and the ‘new Swine Flu’ at that stage, and had even suggested he could be injected with the disease live on TV by medical chief Chris Whitty to show people it was not a threat.  

In a detailed timeline, Mr Cummings said that on March 12 at 7.48am he texted the PM and said the Cabinet Office was ‘terrifyingly sh**’ and Covid restrictions should be stepped up immediately.

However, on the same day Donald Trump was trying to persuade the UK to join a bombing raid in the Middle East.

And Carrie Symonds was ‘going crackers’ at the PM over a ‘trivial’ story in the papers about their dog Dilyn.

The former aide also launched an excoriating attack on Matt Hancock, accusing him of ‘lying’ about PPE and access for treatment for those suffering from the disease.

He told MPs: ‘I think the Secretary of State for Health should’ve been fired for at least 15, 20 things, including lying to everybody on multiple occasions in meeting after meeting in the Cabinet room and publicly.’

He claimed that the then-Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill told him he had ‘lost confidence’ in Mr Hancock’s ‘honesty’ during key meetings.