On a personal level, Dominic Cummings deserves some sympathy for the situation his family was in; and the behaviour of the media has been, shall we say, less than exemplary. But it is worth examining why he attracts this level of venom.

He is at the centre of Government, making policy, but he is unelected. He is not merely implementing policy decided by the elected politicians, the traditional role of civil servants. So here is a bloke who played a major role in persuading the British public that they didn't want to be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, only for them to see themselves being governed by an unelected bureaucrat in London. Oh, and he's made Boris Johnson look pathetic.