(Bloomberg) --

A U.K. government minister has resigned in protest after Boris Johnson’s most senior aide refused to apologize for allegedly breaching lockdown rules, deepening the crisis engulfing the British leader’s inner circle.

The resignation piled further pressure on Johnson to fire Dominic Cummings, his top strategist, who has refused to quit over claims that he flouted the government’s lockdown advice.

The main charge against Cummings is that he ignored the government’s own orders to “stay at home” when he drove more than 250 miles to his parents’ property in northeast England to get childcare support for his four-year-old son.

Douglas Ross, a junior minister for Scotland, said many voters in his district could not understand Cummings’ actions.

“I have constituents who didn’t get to say goodbye to loved ones; families who could not mourn together; people who didn’t visit sick relatives because they followed the guidance of the government,” Ross said in his resignation letter, posted on Twitter. “I cannot in good faith tell them they were all wrong and one senior adviser to the government was right.”

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