Who is Dominic Cummings working for now? What does his wife do?

Boris Johnson hits back at Dominic Cummings' allegations

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Dominic Cummings – once seen as virtually untouchable in his proximity to Boris Johnson – left Downing Street in November in a spectacular fall from grace, booted out by the Prime Minister in an attempt to make a fresh start in government and focus on tackling the pandemic. But Mr Cummings has never been one to go quietly, and on Wednesday he gave his account of how the government handled the coronavirus pandemic while he was in office.

So where does he work now?

Since Mr Cummings, 49, left his post at Downing Street he is not understood to have taken on any new ventures, but has some activities still in the works.

He is reportedly registered as a director of the non-trading company Klute Ltd, which formerly owned the Klute nightclub in Durham, and Dynamic Maps Ltd, an information technology consultancy.

He also runs a company called North Wood. On his blog, he writes that North Wood “tries to solve problems (management, political, communication)”.

What does his wife do?

Dominic Cummings married Mary Wakefield, 46, in 2011.

Mary is a journalist, who has worked at The Spectator for many years, now serving as commissioning editor.

She is the daughter of Sir Humphry Wakefield, of Chillingham Castle in Northumberland.

Sir Humphry describes her as “a musician and painter, [and] also Assistant Editor of The Spectator”.

What has he said about the government?

During a seven-hour session giving evidence to the Commons Health, and Science and Technology committees on Wednesday, Mr Cummings took aim at health secretary Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson in particular.

He said the health secretary “should have been fired for at least 15 to 20 things including lying to everybody on multiple occasions in meeting after meeting in the Cabinet Room and publicly”.

On care homes, Mr Cummings said: “Hancock told us in the Cabinet Room that people were going to be tested before they went back to care homes… We only subsequently found out that that hadn’t happened.

“Now the government rhetoric was ‘We put a shield around care homes’ and ‘Blah, blah, blah’ – it was complete nonsense.”

Mr Cummings accused the government of gross failures in the handling of the pandemic.

“Tens of thousands of people died, who didn’t need to die,” Mr Cummings said.

He apologised for ministers, officials and advisers “like me” for falling “disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect”.

“When the public needed us most the government failed,” he added, apologising to “the families of those who died unnecessarily”.

Mr Cummings said the government was not on a “war footing” when the virus emerged in January and February last year and “lots of key people were literally skiing”.

On Boris Johnson, Mr Cummings said he had dismissed the emerging coronavirus as “the new swine flu” and “just a scare story” – and pledged to be injected “live on TV with the virus so everyone realises it’s nothing to be frightened of'”.

He said he had heard Mr Johnson say he’d rather see “bodies pile high” than order a third lockdown in the autumn of 2020.

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