‘Red wall’ Conservatives feel voter heat in wake of Cummings’s Durham adventure

The prime minister has called for country to move on, but his chief adviser’s trip up the A1 remains a cause of fury in the party’s new northern lands, finds Colin Drury. Could Labour’s fallen red wall be resurrected sooner than expected?

Dominic Cummings outside Downing Street on Friday after the introduction of measures to bring the country out of lockdown (PA)

Late on Friday afternoon last week, Richard Holden, the Conservative MP for North West Durham, sent an innocuous tweet recommending the Westminster play This House.

“If you’re a bit of a political geek,” he wrote, “you’ll love it.”

It was his fifth post of the day. Others had included references to his work on a Commons select committee, his support for a local transport campaign and a mischievous swipe at Keir Starmer.