o now we know why the government is struggling to set up a reliable “track and trace” system. The technology does not yet exist to track and trace the prime minister’s chief adviser to ensure that he is complying with the lockdown rules that the rest of the country has been drilled to obey. Since his rule-breaking was revealed, there has been a wave of demands for the resignation of Dominic Cummings and it is likely to grow stronger after today’s additional allegations. This much is common ground and undenied by Downing Street. He left his family home when his wife had coronavirus symptoms and he feared he had contracted the disease, which it turned out he had. They travelled a long way: London to Durham is not a trip to the local shops for essential items. His Durham-based parents, both in their seventies, are in a high-vulnerability age group. That was a breach of the rules on lockdown which the entire nation was expected to obey on penalty of being found in transgression of the law. The government instructions which he had a hand in drawing up were not vague, but crystal in their clarity. If any member of a household has symptoms, “do not leave your home for any reason”. Number 10 has been trying to bat off the demands for his resignation by depicting this as a human story, deserving of our compassion, in which worried parents needed help with childcare. They took a suspiciously long time to weave together this defence. The official statement was only issued after 10am on Saturday. That was more than 12 hours after the story broke, which is a very long time to produce a response to such a major development in the age of 24/7 media. The statement says that he and his wife made the long road trip because, “owing to his wife being infected with suspected coronavirus and the high likelihood that he would himself become unwell, it was essential for Dominic Cummings to ensure his young child could be properly cared for”. I’m not convinced that this defence will attract the public sympathy they hope for. Other Britons have faced similar agonies during a lockdown that has presented tough, sometimes heartbreaking dilemmas for many, many people. The rules are nevertheless clear. Anyone with reason to believe they have Covid-19 has to quarantine in their main family home for 14 days. The rules are clear for a reason. They don’t work if people feel free to choose to make themselves exceptions, however much they may think they deserve to be. No infected household, however mighty or modest their status, was supposed to be making 264-mile trips to live somewhere else. The government’s slogan was “Stay At Home, Save Lives, Protect The NHS.” It was not “Stay At Home (Unless You Are Dom), Save Lives (Not Compulsory For The Prime Minister’s Top Aide), Protect The NHS (At Your Own Discretion If You Work In Downing Street).” The chief medical officer of Scotland was impelled to resign for a lesser breach. Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College professor, was forced to quit the Sage advisory group when it was revealed that he had flouted the rules by having his lover visit him at home. “The right decision,” said the health secretary, Matt Hancock. Public confidence in the government’s handling of the epidemic is badly corroded when key figures behave as if the rules apply to everyone but themselves. When trust, so absolutely essential to the handling of this crisis, is abused and diminished, the public loses faith in the calibre and integrity of decision-makers. Were we talking about anyone other than Mr Cummings – were we talking about a less powerful figure than the tea cosy-wearing Rasputin of Number 10 – he would be gone already. He survives only at the indulgence of his employer. So what started as a significant revelation about the chief adviser is already evolving into an even more important story about Boris Johnson and his premiership. There was some surprise among Tories when Mr Cummings, a figure previously most closely associated with Michael Gove, was given such a sweeping role at Number 10. The explanation was that Mr Johnson had been impressed with the demotic energy and mendacious but effective messaging that he had brought to the Leave side of the Brexit referendum. He went up further in the prime minister’s estimation by crafting the ultimately successful brinkmanship strategy that Number 10 employed during the bitter battles over Brexit during the last parliament. Since the Tories’ majority-winning election result last December, Mr Cummings has amassed a vast amount of clout. Though he has not won every battle that he has started, he has made himself one of the most powerful unelected figures ever to work at Number 10. He instigated the resignation of a chancellor earlier in the year when Sajid Javid found his demands too humiliating to bear. One former cabinet minister recently complained to me: “Cummings has complete contempt for parliament and for the cabinet whom he regards as shit.” He is the architect of a “hub and spokes” design for government which is circulating within Whitehall and intended to make all ministers subordinate supplicants to an all-controlling centre run by him from Number 10 and by Mr Gove from the Cabinet Office. There was a hot controversy when it was revealed that the chief adviser had been attending meetings of Sage, the body under the chairmanship of Sir Patrick Vallance, which is tasked with delivering dispassionate scientific counsel to the government. Some scientists on the committee actually welcomed his presence, on the basis that this was the only way to get their advice transformed into policy. They reported that only Mr Cummings could be guaranteed to seize the undivided attention of an easily distracted prime minister who is not renowned for his devotion to detail. That is a measure of his power. That is also an illustration of how dependent Mr Johnson has become on him. The prime minister’s first reflex will be to try to brazen this out. He will be cross about the furious cyclone that is now raging around Mr Cummings, but he won’t be personally mortified that his chief adviser didn’t follow the government’s instructions. The prime minister’s own biography is littered with examples of a cavalier attitude towards norms of behaviour. Rules are for other people – not for Boris Johnson. That has been one of the guiding principles of a life not otherwise distinguished by many principles. His own biography is also rich with examples of blunders and scandals that he has survived simply by refusing to be shamed by them. So his first desire will be for the storm to blow itself out after 48 hours or so. But if it doesn’t? This prime minister is also a ruthless calculator of where his personal advantage lies. He will be weighing how much damage this furore could do to him if it doesn’t quickly subside. This story broke at the end of what was already the government’s worst fortnight of the crisis. Number 10 has been forced to perform a U-turn on imposing “NHS surcharges” on foreign-born health workers, a reverse more hateful to the prime minister because he was forced into it after the leader of the opposition pursued him on the issue. Plans for a partial reopening of schools have collided with resistance from teachers and parents. The grim death toll in care homes and fresh concerns about the government’s ability to deliver on tracking and tracing have contributed to a febrile mood among Tory MPs. Many of them will celebrate if Mr Cummings is defenestrated from Number 10. They resent his swaggering power, they hate the ill-disguised disdain with which he treats them, and they would be delighted to see him gone. As we enter the delicate and perilous process of easing out of the lockdown without reigniting the epidemic, public confidence in the government’s handling of the emergency has turned negative for the first time since the crisis began. Confidence is not likely to be restored by the revelation that the prime minister’s closest adviser has been breaking the rules. Another thing the life of Boris Johnson tells us is that his only core commitment is to himself. Journalistic colleagues, fellow politicians and wives have all found that there is no such thing as the undying loyalty of this prime minister. However important you may be to him for a time, you will become dispensable when he decides you have outlived your usefulness. Dominic Cummings will have the full support of Boris Johnson. Until he suddenly doesn’t. •Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer