On 23 March 2020, the UK government introduced three new measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures required people to stay at home, except for very limited purposes; closed certain businesses and venues; and stopped all gatherings of more than two people in public (Cabinet Office, 2020). These lockdown measures were promoted with the slogan ‘Stay at Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives’. This directive was very clear, and remained so even after it was clarified that one could in fact leave home for ‘very limited reasons’, specifically: ‘shopping for basic necessities’; ‘one form of exercise a day’; ‘any medical need’ and ‘travelling for work purposes’. There was widespread compliance with these lockdown rules with people making the sacrifices needed for compliance.

On 22 May 2020, the newspapers The Guardian and The Mirror carried the story that Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister Boris Johnson's key advisor, had broken the lockdown rules in driving his family from London to Durham while his wife was suspected of being ill with COVID-19 (Crerar, 2020; Weaver, 2020a). This news item occupied the headlines for the next few days and led to Mr Cummings giving a press conference in the Rose Garden of No. 10 Downing Street on 25 May to set out his version of events (Bland, 2020). Throughout the government choose to defend Mr Cummings and on 27 May, in an appearance before the Commons liaison committee, Boris Johnson refused to apologise for Mr Cumming's actions, rather insisting that there had been no breach of the rules. ‘If you have exceptional problems with childcare’, he said, ‘you can vary your arrangements, that's clear’, and he said repeatedly that it was time to ‘move on’ (Walker, 2020). This support of Mr Cummings occurred against an emotive background. For many, what was ‘clear’ was that Mr Cummings had broken the lockdown rules, and this mattered. One minister resigned as an MP over the government's refusal to sanction Mr Cummings (Mason and Proctor, 2020). One doctor quit the NHS (Campbell, 2020). Constituents sent over 180,000 emails complaining to their MP about Mr Cummings’ actions (Proctor et al, 2020).