Cummings and Goings

Dominic Cummings is chief political advisor to the current British Prime Minister (PM), Boris Johnson - or Bojo to his adoring fans -  a tousled political bruiser, strong on charm and classical erudition but short on principles if they seem to block the way to power. Cummings is thought to have masterminded the recent election campaign that brought Johnson and his Conservative Government an unassailable overall majority of 80 in the House of Commons; “Let’s get Brexit done!” was the winning slogan for an electorate exhausted by three years of bitter and inconclusive squabbling that divided political parties and the Nation after the narrow referendum majority in favour of leaving the European Union (EU).

Political advisors are often regarded with suspicion and distaste by the upper echelons of the Whitehall Civil Service, who are traditionally cautious but usually clever and effective, their brief being to offer the elected ministers sound advice but above all to carry out their ministers’ policies efficiently even if they believe them to be misguided and not in the best interests of the Country. (The BBC TV series Yes Minister beautifully satirized this relationship.) Political advisors are in danger of undermining the civil servant’s role and countering their advice. Cummings has been demonized by sections of the media as a subversive eminence grise pulling the strings of government behind the scenes, a svengali whispering dangerous ideas in the Prime Minster’s ear.

There have been two senior ‘goings’ in the past fortnight. Sajid Javid, the Chancellor of the Exchequer -- he who collects our taxes, decides how to spent the proceeds and borrows the shortfall --  resigned during a Government reshuffle. He had been given the unpalatable ultimatum to sack his loyal advisors and bring his powerful department, The Treasury, under direct control of the PM’s team (coyly referred to as ‘Number 10’, the PM’s official residence in Downing Street). He has been replaced by Richi Sunak, a rapidly rising star with degrees from Oxford and the Stanford Business School, who is thought to be fiscally less conservative than Javid and less likely to oppose plans for greater spending (for example on the ridiculously expensive HS2 plan for a new faster rail link from London to Birmingham and beyond). The second departure was the Permanent Secretary to the Home Office, the overburdened ministry that deals with Law and Order, Immigration, Citizenship and Homeland Security, and that is heavily involved in the negotiations for a new relationship with the EU. He was offered a severance package to go quietly, but chose instead, against Civil Service convention, to go public with a stinging attack on Number 10 for briefing against him and more directly on the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, for her demanding style and bullying tactics. Questions have been asked about the role of the chief puppeteer in these shenanigans.

Cummings has an interesting blog where he thinks aloud fresh thoughts on radical ideas for changing how Government and the Civil Service work. Of course, radicals and radical ideas are anathema to much of the Establishment, a vague collective term for people who appear to run the country, and have a strong sense of entitlement and a devotion to the preservation of their species. Our two oldest Universities, lumped together as Oxbridge, are frequently implicated in this perpetuation of the status quo. Cummings himself has a first class degree in Ancient and Modern History from Oxford, where he was described as "fizzing with ideas, unconvinced by any received set of views about anything  … someone determined to bring down things that don’t work." His latest interesting post includes a recruiting call for new kinds of people to apply for jobs as government officials (members of the executive branch of the Civil Service, traditionally recruited from high-flying graduates of the top universities, who quickly become imbued with its long-established prevailing ethos). One of his list of seven invited categories was “weirdos and misfits with odd skills” and, as you may imagine, this one quickly caught media attention; however, as it turned out, it was not entirely tongue in cheek.

At last I have reached the prompt for the main point of this post, but I’ve already gone on too long. Stay tuned for the denouement.