Well, for a moment last night I thought Cummings and Frost were both on their way in the wake of Lee Cain's resignation but it looks unfortunately as if both are staying. Cain, the PM's communications chief quit over the appointment of Allegra Stratton as spokesman in government briefings. An appointment he was instrumental in calling for. It appears neither he nor superforecaster Cummings anticipated that she would demand to report directly to Johnson. This put Cain's nose out of joint since it was a demotion for him.
He was apparently offered a new post as Chief of Staff but Carried Symonds, the PM's Fiancée objected to this (along with others we are told) and so he resigned.
Jim Pickard at the FT described it thus:
One well-placed Whitehall official said Number 10 had become a “nest of vipers”, adding “it’s all falling apart in there, it’s far worse than the outside world realises. Plus doing it in the middle of pandemic is totally disgraceful”.https://t.co/SXMFKF2lWl
— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) November 11, 2020
Cain is another of the Vote Leave gang of inadequates who finds himself at the centre of this disastrous government fighting so many fires they have set themselves through sheer hubris and incompetence. The next few weeks will see multiple train crashes and I am not convinced they will survive intact.
You cannot be that abrasive and arrogant without creating a lot of enemies and eventually there comes a point when you look around for support and find you don't have any. This will happen sooner or later to both Cummings and Frost. They have brought the nation to the edge of ruin and will walk away when disaster strikes leaving the mess to be cleared up by someone else with the taxpayers picking up the bill.
Rod McKenzie of the RHA was on Newsnight last night spelling out the chaos in government preparations in a way that only he can. Hilary Benn's Future Relationship Committee heard yesterday from Steve Bartlett of the Freigth providers software association and Elizabeth de Jong of Logistics UK and they also talked about the paucity of information but McKenzie was the most forceful. See the clip below:
“It’s been chaotic, it’s been frankly pathetic.”The Road Haulage Association’s @RHARodMcKenzie says the information provided to businesses over new post-Brexit customs procedures is "woefully inadequate” https://t.co/1WgTl9mam0#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/DTAnmXsYyR— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) November 11, 2020
Peter Foster at the FT tweeted about de Jong's evidence on the haulier's handbook - a document explaining what paper work and processes a driver needs to know about in simple terms - which has already been through several iterations with a new version to be published on 18 November and a final version on 7 December. This will initially only be available in English although 85% of the hauliers using Ro-Ro traffic are from other EU countries.
NEW:🚨🇬🇧🇪🇺🚛🚛🚚🚚🇪🇺🇬🇧🚨There are 35 days to go until new #brexit border comes into force ...and the Dept of Transport hasn’t even got a “hauliers handbook” ready. My latest via @FT This one a real head scratcher. 1/thread— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) November 11, 2020
It's hard to appreciate the dire position we are in. We are in the middle of a second covid wave with deaths reaching a European record of 50,000 yesterday, the economy is tanking with new ONS figures out later today expected to show a further increase in borrowing and a reduction in GDP, trade talks with the EU are stalled and at the centre of it all, a nest of vipers arguing among themselves about jobs and status.
You could never have imagined how bad it has become. On Twitter as you can see above, Pickard reports insiders saying it's far worse from the inside.
I wonder what the Tory party and MPs are thinking now?
