Monday 2 August 2021

Dominic Cummings: The Silly Season

Sorry about the lack of posting: in my case, two deals to close before 31 July.  And hols soon!  

Anyhow, in the meantime one of our regular anons offered us this BTL yesterday, on the subject of Dom  - Dom Cummings, that is!

"Dom is a tragic case, very bright and driven guy, could have been a real asset to the UK, who gets shafted (like pretty much everyone who works long enough alongside Boris, he's not special), takes it personally and proceeds to make himself unemployable by not just spilling beans but pouring them on the floor and rolling round in them naked. Even I'd think twice about employing him. Real waste of talent. 'Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide' "

(We like the cultured stuff so thanks for that, anon.)

So: by way of a silly-season potboiler  -   would DC have survived at all in former ages, or suffered the fate of Savaranola?  Have his revelations already been priced into Boris' reputation?  Does he have anything more to offer, or is he beyond polite society's pale, a broken reed?   Discuss!

But do remember - the laws of libel apply online ...

ND

22 comments:

lilith said...

Uncanny resemblance! Poor Dom. He's like I was in the bank this morning. F-ing furious and not going to take it any more.....

lilith said...

Imagine working that hard for Brexit and a Tory gov only for them to turn out to be both corrupt and communists?!

jim said...

Could Dommy have succeeded? What we have here is a category error. "If only we had some intelligent people...", but the structure of UK government is such that intelligent people are wasted on the job and not wanted at all, what actually gets put to use is property speculating, land grabbing and issue avoidance. No brains needed.

So, no, Dommy could never have succeeded, he was foolish to try.

But you can't blame him for failing. To make any difference something like the Mao Zedong approach would be needed. Bullet holes in green benches, mass burnings of Erskine May, the dispossession of the landed gentry etc etc. Rees-Mogg going barefoot. Pretty messy, lets not go there. Boris would not have liked that idea. Like all good consultants Dommy should have kept his mouth shut, taken the money and told the punter a comfort story.

dearieme said...

It's like being at school again.

Was that Dryden? No, Pope! No, I'm sure it's Dryden!


As for DC: Cardinal Wolsey? He had the good taste to die before he was executed.

Thomas Cromwell? Nah, Dom was never remotely that good. The Cecils, father and son? No, ditto.

Merlin? Will Dom end his days wandering the woods of Dumfriesshire - or in his case Co Durham - as a druid driven mad by political frustration, blethering about how unfair it all is?

Bill Quango MP said...

I know some here loathe them historical comparison, but Dom himself likes to make them. In the excellent Brexit book, Dom likens his abilities to the Viet Cong.
He fights an insurgency war. Making the opponents strengths, their weakness. The powerful application of propaganda on an already marginalised people. I’m fairly sure he mentions the architect behind the successful expulsion of the French, Japanese and American forces, by name.
Võ Nguyên Giáp

Giap was almost booted out of his communist party position, several times. Despite being the ultimate victor in his battles. Despite him being ‘right’, he was t necessarily ‘ sound.’ And he was always a threat to the other factions in the communist party. So he was marginalised as much as possible. Like the Roman generals. Lest they become too powerful.

Cummings was wrong to take the political adviser role. He should have instead asked for some specific science, technology, supremo type role.
There is a reason politics dislikes loose cannons. Something crashing about the deck, injuring friend and foe alike.
Boris was wrong to ask him into the inner circle.
He was wrong to accept.

The shame is, he asks why is the civil service no good? Why won’t government use more private sector leaders? . Why is government so rigidly, incompetently, political and damagingly partisan? Why won’t they plan longer, better, with purpose. Why is it all so poorly peopled, with chancers. Fakers. Morons. Apparatchiks. Yes men. Lackeys. Frauds and lightweights? Why won’t they listen to me !!!

And then, with his current behaviour, he answers all those questions.

Timbo614 said...

I always thought he was a bad choice by Boris. I mean you can have a bit-of-maverick PM but he definitely does NOT need a completely maverick advisor.
I didn't even think that Dom was wrong to attempt reorganising but he needed insiders on his side and a better method than head on collisions.
just my two penn'th.

E-K said...

Boris was up against The Blob. He needed an acid little man to get into them.

He's failed. So has Priti...

Now Boris isn't against The Blob any more. He seems to be going for the quiet life.

jim said...

Looking around for someone in history who reminds us of Dominic seems a difficult task. Because no one remembers the failures.

So far he has achieved nothing to be remembered for, equally we will find it hard to locate his unremembered equivalent. Perhaps a blog will live on for some obscure academics to rake over in the year 2500, or his signal will be lost in the noise. We shall see.

Elby the Beserk said...

It does seems to me that it was Cummings, not Johnson, who enable the Brexit referendum win.

Lest we forget...

Elby the Beserk said...

@Jim : 6:52am.

See above.

E-K said...

Cummings was a squirt of vinegar in the eye of the Oyster-Blob. Oooh. Forgot. An Oyster doesn't have an eye and The Blob is amorphous. It has swelled up like expanding foam in its angry response to Brexit (and Trump in the US.)

Never has the West looked so loony-Left. Never has Britain looked so Communist.

I couldn't believe it on Sunday night. Wife and I tuned into the Proms for a bit of relaxation - within minutes they went all BLM on us and started asking "Is it right to call Mozart a genius as he was a white male ? Women and blacks were denied the opportunity to compose music like that."

This literally seconds after I'd said to my wife "Oh my GOD. Mozart was a genius. Where, the hell, in the human mind do ideas like that come from ?"

The Blob are relentless. They will not let us rest.

Boris is tired and disarmed without Cummings. How sweet the pillow talk must sound to him now.

Anonymous said...

Who's to say that the Brexit majority wouldn't have been higher with a different campaign?
Everyone assumes it's was Dom's genius campaign that got the Brexit majority but maybe it wasn't that great and actually lost votes to the remain side.

jim said...

Apropos non achievement.

Brexit has a long history, once Cameron agreed to a referendum all that was necessary was a meeja push. Rich guys own the meeja, All Dommy had to do was keep up the pressure. All for 1.5%. It was the Sun (and Mail and TGraph and rich guys) wot won it, not Dommy.

Will Brexit be a 'success', not even Dommy knows. There is certainly no rational reason to think so. Wrong solution to the wrong problem - or a good way to control the plebs. Not looking good so far, wrong kind of Brexit? Leave it out, it was a daft idea from day 1.

Going back further we might look at the Gove/Dommy education project. A lot spent on defeating 'the blob'. But council treasurers and ratepayers might not be so fond of the huge wrongful dismissal claims that followed and the NDAs that went with the payouts. A great success - not really.

Don Cox said...

Joining the EU was a mistake from day 1. I supported it in the hope that we would get a United States of Europe with a constitution like that of the USA.

I was wrong. I didn't know enough history.

Don Cox

E-K said...

Jim

"There is certainly no rational reason to think so. Wrong solution to the wrong problem" Brexit.

Well that depends if you look at it from Mr Cameron's perspective.

The word Brexit didn't exist until after the referendum, really.

The point of the referendum was not to get us out of the EU. Mr Cameron wanted it to unify his party, see off the 'headbangers' and to get us in the euro.

Bill Quango MP said...

Cummings was essential.
He got Remain onto the back foot. Onto areas where they had only fear to defend the EU with.

For some reason, Remainers insist on suggesting Cameron wanted out of the EU.

He did not. He wanted a winning margin to stay in. So UKIP would be defeated, and ever closer Union assured.
Cameron was in favour of the EU. It’s nonsense to even think otherwise.

Osborne was not even in favour of a referendum. Suspecting pro EU might lose. Hence his ridiculous project fear budget forecasts. To panic the people, Covid style.

One last historical peek.

Pickett’s charge was a very famous, doomed, costly attack, in US history. Why that battle was lost has been debated for centuries. Almost ever since the firing stopped. General Pickett himself was asked constantly who was to blame for the debacle. Not him., He personally led his far too small force to a horrific defeat.

“Asked by reporters why Pickett's Charge failed, Pickett frequently replied, "I've always thought the Yankees had something to do with it."

And so is true of Brexit. It was Leavers who decided it. There were simply not enough Remainers. Far too many people who saw very much benefit to staying with it. That was why remain lost. More wanted out, than in.

Blaming Cameron for allowing the referendum does not negate the truth. The people, the voters, wanted to leave.
And refusing them a vote would not have banished brexit or UKIP.

E-K said...

... which mystifies me as to how the people have bought into Covid Fear big time, BQ.

My local city is about 30% boarded up now. Some shops by appointment only.

Nick Drew said...

@ There were simply not enough Remainers

we will never know, but had poor Jo Cox not been killed I have to guess it would have been more like 55:45, and a lot less scope for whingeing

Bill Quango MP said...

It’s a strange sight, EK.

I guess you have worked throughout the emergency.
So have I.

Those that have been in work have a very different view to the furlough crowd who have been having a gap year.

The elderly have a very different view on the pandemic to the young.

I suppose that this fear, was a real one. Catch Covid. Die. Even if the chances were still quite low, to catch, was like to catch Black Death. So people stayed in.

Timbo614 said...

@BQ. "Catch Covid. Die." Yes, exactly.
I'm still 67 (just) but a 50+ years smoker, damaged immune system (no spleen) was instructed to shield. Choices: Risk a bad respiratory disease which would probably kill me OR Stay put and order deliveries from Tesco. Simples! Tesco win.

E-K said...

Yes. I worked through... and in real fear for myself and relatives in the beginning.

Then the information came in and then I made my personal risk assessment which was low enough to make me more relaxed - rightly, it turns out.

visc said...

E-k 10.04 "Boris was up against The Blob"

Nope Boris *is* the Blob (as are the Tory party as much as any other in Westminster.
Parliament.

BQ 8.16 "I suppose that this fear, was a real one. Catch Covid. Die. Even if the chances were still quite low, to catch, was like to catch Black Death. So people stayed in."

Except it was never the Black death was it?
As has been said a million times before, given our friends at Sage, the Behavioral Insights team, OFCOM and other insidious fear mongers the ability to judge risk was nudged to near impossible for many as the atmosphere was made hysterical.

The "Elderly" you talk of were betrayed, and for many saw the theft of their limited time and capacity for joy and living life itself.

All this added the execrable figures coming out of ONS, PHE, and even the MHRA since the Enabling Act of March 2020, no wonder "people stayed in". It's not that often the UK Govt openly deploys is security forces against its own population is it?