Can politicians ever control the media agenda?

Boris Johnson can try to change the subject when it comes to the press but he won’t succeed until public opinion moves on, writes John Rentoul

Boris Johnson will struggle to move the story on from Dominic Cummings until public anger subsides (PA)

Boris Johnson is trying to change the subject. When he decided to take the daily coronavirus briefing himself on Sunday to deal with the furore over his chief adviser’s trip to Durham during the lockdown, he followed it by announcing that the government was pressing ahead with limited reopening of primary schools on 1 June.

The schools failed to make it on to the front pages of Monday’s newspapers. The prime minister then sent Dominic Cummings himself out to provide a fuller, first-person account of himself. Johnson followed that up by taking the daily briefing again, this time deflecting questions about Dominic’s Cummings and goings by referring to the earlier “substantial chunk of autobiography”, and then announcing that open-air markets would be opening on 1 June and, if possible, non-essential shops on 15 June.

One or two newspapers mentioned the further easing of the lockdown on their front pages, but the media remained overwhelmingly focused on the story of the Cummings family sojourn in “an isolated cottage on my father’s farm”.