Brendan O’Neill, the editor of Spiked, has provoked the wrath of EU Remainers after suggesting many of them are suffering from ‘Cummings-derangement syndrome’ as they seek Brexit revenge on Boris Johnson’s chief advisor.
During a debate about the Dominic Cummings controversy on ITV’s Good Morning Britain program on Monday, O’Neill took aim at what he called “hysterical remoaners.” In the past 10 days, the UK prime minister’s key aide has been at the center of a scandal over his apparent flouting of Covid-19 lockdown rules.
Cummings, the former ‘Vote Leave’ campaign director, is widely regarded as the chief architect of the successful 2016 EU referendum campaign that saw the UK vote to exit the European Union.
O’Neill who edits Spiked, the online British magazine that focuses on issues of freedom and state control, told Good Morning Britain co-hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid that the intensity of the fury directed at Cummings is driven by “the revenge of the remoaners.”
I really do think this has become hysterical. A lot of people, it seems to me, are suffering from ‘Cummings-derangement syndrome.’
‘A lot of people it seems to me are suffering from ‘Cummings-derangement syndrome’.’Spiked Online editor Brendan O’Neill says the criticism of Dominic Cummings is driven by a ‘revenge of the remoaners’. pic.twitter.com/wdERDfIlHt
O’Neill also had harsh words for Morgan and Reid’s industry, in the role it has played in the Cummings saga, claiming that the “media has stirred up a witch hunt against him.”
Cummings found himself at the center of a huge political storm, after it was revealed that he drove 260 miles (418 kilometers) from London to Durham with his ill wife and four-year-old child at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, as part of its lockdown measures, the UK government had ordered that people stay home and make no unnecessary trips.
O’Neill’s provocative remarks have led to a furious backlash on social media, with many taking issue with his Brexit “revenge” theory. EU Remainers came out in force to deny that was their motivation, with some insisting people are infuriated by Cummings’s behavior because “he broke the rules he helped to set. It has naff-all to do with Brexit.”
Others rejected O’Neill’s accusations, saying that the huge furor caused by Cummings’ actions had nothing to do with Brexit and “everything to do with govt accountability.”
A UK police investigation into the alleged lockdown violation concluded that there was a “minor breach” of Covid-19 regulations by Cummings, when he and his family traveled 26 miles (42 kilometers) from Durham to Barnard Castle to “test his eyesight,” but that no retrospective action would be taken against him.
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