The ancient Corinthian philosopher, Diogénēs, squatted and emptied his bowels in a well-timed and orchestrated act in front of an, up-to-this-point, rapturous audience. He wished to express his cynicism towards their lifestyles. His expression of contempt was to expose the hypocrisy of the informed and educated elite, happy to live with gross class inequality, slavery, opulence and corrupt personal power, but their sensibilities outraged by seeing another human being shit – a daily basic fact of life for us all.

It’s a basic rule across all classes – don’t shit on your own doorstep. Unless you don’t give a crap. And that appears to be the attitude of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his senior adviser (if not puppet-master), Dominic Cummings. The people who created the Lockdown Rules (against their own basic instincts, it has to be said, and too late to prevent thousands of unnecessary deaths), broke those laws from the very beginning and, when found out, have defended their right to break them.

The Elite are decent people, you see, as oppose to us common drunkards and n’er-do-wells. Cummings has been presented to us as simply a caring father (again, suggesting most of us Plebs aren’t), and did the “right thing” by travelling and walking publicly while infected with COVID-19, which, by contrast, most of us are not responsible enough to be trusted to do.

There is a much needed public outcry. Not just at the act itself but at the attempts by the most powerful politicians as well as friends and family to keep it all secret for months. It’s so good to see people spontaneously turning-up outside the Cummings’ London house and chanting their outrage, let alone the advertising trucks broadcasting Johnson’s original lockdown message onto his doorstep.

But this outcry may be misplaced. Are we simply smelling the Number 2 and not analysing the underlying message? This is the man who has publicly stated that: “Tory MPs largely do not care about these poorer people. They don’t care about the NHS.”

Has Big C carefully choreographed every quote and act in order to cut the crap?

The elite had managed to have The Mob lock ourselves away for the best part of two months, largely lagging behind the responses of most other governments worldwide (apart from the USA). They acted at all times reluctantly because, as ideological eugenicists, they wanted to let the virus become part of public life, the fittest able to survive and the infirm and disabled freeing-up the inadequate social infrastructure by dying.

They knew that having 2-300,000 people die, the projected scientific figure if no action was taken, might threaten their power. As it is, the 80-120,000 deaths they are projected to be liable for appears workable as a compromise. Nevertheless, it is now time to end the pretence and force us all out of Lockdown and back to work. After all, they have a 60+ working majority government and no effective opposition.

Support for Johnson’s government has weakened to that of last December’s election, not exactly a signal of mass revolt. But the carefully constructed mixed-messages from Cumming’s Number 10 haven’t confused the public enough to no longer care. And, most importantly, the campaigns putting People before Profit, developed from the bottom-up to force trade unions and working class tribunes to act, have had some effect.

By last week the Government was on the back foot, fully cognisant of the growing opposition most apparent in the refusenik teachers and parents saying no to returning to schools on 1st June. How to break this inertia in the plan for “herd immunity”?

The first tactic of any Ruling Class is to divide the mass so to rule. So they protected their supporters with tax-payers money whilst herding the slaves back-to-work, carefully protecting the message of staying safe to appease their furloughed base whilst doing nothing practical to keep the workers healthy.

Then they condemned the dissenters and doubters as “becoming addicted to staying at home”, loosening the messages to ensure their right-wing cohort (within the Mob as well as their own Upper Classes) ran to the countryside and beaches in a party frenzy. COVID-19 was back on the loose to be caught and spread for a Second Wave that would do the job that the Lockdown had impeded.

And the Cummings’ controversy? They know it’ll blow over, the small bunch of Tory dissenters exposed to be culled once “all this” is over, with deep questions of democracy and plebiscite left hanging in the air. But how do you finally break the resistance and reinstill an “everyman for himself” (they are misogynists after all) mentality after Lockdown? Best to act by example.

Let’s “leak” the facts about Cummings’ family trips and offer the “any decent father would do the same” message of patriarchy, individual reliance, family-first survivalism and personal choice over social responsibility. Yep, breaking the Lockdown rules was the right thing to do.

But perhaps I’m just being cynical.