Quick, reverse… Cummings is the bad guy now because he wanted lockdown?

Downing Street palace intrigue centres once more on the Prime Minister’s most controversial aide, Dominic Cummings, and his interactions with the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).

Last week, an outraged Guardian reported that Cummings was “on the secret scientific group advising the government on the coronavirus pandemic”. Panic and fury ensued. MPs, journalists, and scientific officials alike demanded to know why Cummings had been there, what role he had played, and whether he was responsible for the UK dragging its heels over implementing the Covid-19 lockdown measures seen in other countries.

A strongly-worded government statement denied that Cummings was “on” Sage and called the whole story “ludicrous”.

But that isn’t the full story. In an unexpected plot twist, sources involved in Sage have revealed to Bloomberg that Cummings did indeed exert pressure on the scientists… to move to lockdown sooner.

Assuming it is accurate, and it seems to be, this latest development doesn’t fit anyone’s narrative. The government’s insistence that Cummings attended only to “listen” and occasionally “ask questions or offer help” has been undermined by reports that he made his own views clear and “swayed the discussion toward faster action”.

But the revelations are a blow for die-hard critics of Cummings too. Up until now, the popular attitude has been that Boris Johnson’s chief aide was a fierce opponent of lockdown measures, pushing a much derailed (and misunderstood) “herd immunity” strategy that would let the virus tear through the population, to hell with the death toll. This new leak suggests the exact opposite.

Cummings, who appears to purposefully style himself in the manner of an evil scientist out of a James Bond film, is used to being cast as the villain. Indeed, he seems to revel in it.

While friends insist that he is very nice in person, he has a history of picking unnecessary fights and has caused drama and division in virtually every political job he has ever had. His alienating behaviour as Michael Gove’s spad in the Department for Education led to his boss getting a swift demotion, while his abrasive approach on the Vote Leave campaign (depicted by Benedict Cumberbatch in the Channel 4 drama) almost got him fired.

Since moving to Downing Street as the Prime Minister’s top adviser, Cummings has been a lightning rod for critics of both Johnson and Brexit to vent their ire. They accuse him of wielding undue and unaccountable influence, of riding roughshod through convention and protocol, of being a power-hungry maniac determined to tear down the entire British system of government, driven by deluded dreams of Silicon Valley-esque “creative destruction”.

Some of this is no doubt unfair, but Cummings has hardly helped himself by attacking the judiciary, going to war with the BBC, and promising a full-scale assault on the civil service immediately after the election last December. And the scandal at the start of the year when he hired an adviser with dubious credentials and a stated sympathy towards eugenics will have crystallised the public perception as a reckless maverick itching to play god with people’s lives.

If the shoe fits, wear it – and in the minds of many critics, Cummings wears the shoes of a crazed pseudoscientist, paired with a silly t-shirt emblazoned with a mad slogan suggesting a callous attitude to risk, topped off with a stupid hat.

A government that has used the mantra “guided by the science” since the start of this crisis to justify its response (and outcomes that look increasingly unfavourable compared to other countries) has a problem on its hands when it turns out that “science” may have been influenced by a political appointee with his own experimental agenda.

And yet, the facts don’t fit. However much those on the left might want to blame Cummings for the UK’s hesitation in following other countries’ coronavirus response, it seems they may have him to thank for the restrictions coming in when they did.

As the Bloomberg report outlines, the government’s decision to close pubs and then enter full lockdown three days later came directly after Cummings’ interventions. And far from challenging the scientists, one Sage attendee reveals that there was “relief that Cummings had pushed for a lockdown because there were concerns that politicians had not fully understood how serious the coronavirus emergency had become”.

That does not make Cummings’ alleged conduct in these meetings any more appropriate. As others, most notably former government chief scientific adviser Sir David King, have pointed out, the scientific advice given to the government “should be free of any political bias”, with no place for political aides to provide their own interpretation.

Moreover, if Sage’s role was to purely to offer scientific advice, then it is unclear why it was discussing policy – such as lockdowns – at all. The blurring of these two fields, epitomised by the presence of Cummings, presents the government with some difficult questions.

But in terms of what actually happened, the logical conclusion from the evidence so far is that the Sage scientists were arguing over the best course of action, and Cummings (with characteristic impatience) urged them to stop dithering and make a decision, then communicated their advice back to Number 10 in terms that the Prime Minister would take seriously.

That still suggests an unelected adviser wielding disproportionate influence, perhaps for his own political ends. But with the general consensus that Britain moved too late on implementing strict measures, the government’s pro-lockdown critics are left with the incongruent thought that Cummings’ unsanctioned presence at the Sage meetings may have saved hundreds of lives.

The biggest takeaway from these revelations should be in puncturing the comforting fiction pushed by the government and parts of the media that “the science” of Covid-19 is a single objective truth on which scientists are united, rather than a messy debate between various experts that leaders must absorb before making political decisions.

That isn’t nearly so satisfying a conclusion as a sensationalist story about the Prime Minister’s rogue adviser and his Blofeld-cat-stroking schemes.