The Times had a great article yesterday about the Cummings affair with a few nice insights into the thinking inside Downing Street. There is a recognition that it has damaged the prime minister and at a time when he can least afford it. Johnson is never sure footed at anytime and his handling of the pandemic has been - let's say - less than impressive. He frequently looks like the person who has just entered a room where a world-shattering event has taken place and needs it all explained to him.
The article says Cummings is central to Johnson's efforts to "reshape his political agenda and administration for the new Covid-19 reality, to ensure there is no extension and to use the fall-out from the virus crisis to change Whitehall."
Whether he really is indispensable or not isn't the point. Johnson thinks he is and cannot let go of him but the article notes Cummings' wounds are self inflicted. When the story first emerged that he had not stayed in his primary residence but rather driven to his parents’ cottage 260 miles away, he "indulged his instinct for aggression."
“He isn’t remotely bothered by this story,” friends told journalists at the time. “It’s more fake news from The Guardian. There is zero chance of him resigning.” Last weekend, too, Mr Cummings was allowed to run his own form of defence, summed up by one ally as “never explain, never complain”.
Eventually he was "remotely bothered" as we know and was forced to humiliate himself on national TV with an explanation for his excursion to Barnard Castle that makes him look like a nutjob rather than the mega-brained powerhouse that he thinks of himself as. The Times article again:
"He accepted that the public deserved an explanation but remained determined not to give them an apology for behaviour he regarded as both morally and legally correct, and began work on his statement. After rehearsing in Downing Street’s rose garden he went inside to change into a crisply pressed white shirt and braced for his encounter with the media."
There is an impression given by his friends that if he went other key staff would follow as if Johnson is being held hostage-like in No 10 by a small group of dedicated nihilists. Not very veiled threats are being made against senior Tories who didn't support Cummings. Listen to this:
Ministers such as Penny Mordaunt who criticised Mr Cummings, or even just failed to voice public support, can be sure their actions have been noted.
“Dom is very vindictive. I think someone like Penny — she’s f***ed. I know how they operate and she is in big trouble. They will go after her,” one well-placed observer said. “Believe you, me, they know exactly who’s not been helpful — who’s been putting things on WhatsApp. They have spies everywhere.”
It appears almost as if the entire party is being held at gunpoint.
And it is claimed the PM came under pressure from some of his pro-Brexit donors after they were warned that should Mr Cummings be forced out, "a bulwark against an extension to the transition period beyond December 31 would be lost." It looks like the entire country will have to suffer to make money for a few very wealthy individuals who are taking short positions on the currency and key stocks that will make money only if we leave without a deal in January.
Apparently some Brexiteers expect officials and interest groups to argue that the UK cannot both fight the virus and prepare to leave the EU without a trade deal and hope Cummings will provide the pushback to get us over a cliff.
The end bit was perhaps the most interesting:
The worst may have passed but the final reckoning has yet to be counted. “I don’t think anybody would say this has been an easy experience for him. But it remains to be seen how deeply the public feel about this,” one source said.
Another well-placed figure who knows Mr Cummings well said that the saga had exposed him as a hypocrite, but it would be the Conservative Party that would bear the consequences.
“What is certainly true is the ‘one rule for them’ is the thing that has stuck the most,” they said. “It goes to the heart of what some people think about Conservatives.
“When you look at Dom, who easily lives in a million-pound house, driving a £50,000 car, going up to stay in his in-laws’ castle — suddenly everyone has seen him for what he is. He has done some great things — that’s undeniable —but he has kind of been exposed.
“He is the person who pushed for a £20,000 fine if you broke the border quarantine, who himself drove up to Durham. It’s like The Wizard of Oz — everyone has just pulled back the curtain and it’s like some bald bloke in shit clothes.”
