The government seems to be descending into chaos at the moment. In March, The Telegraph had an article by the editor of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson, claiming that Downing Street were terrified of Dominic Cummings who was sacked by Johnson at the end of last year. Nelson, often spectacularly wrong, has excelled himself this time. He said they shouldn't worried about Cummings. This was his conclusion:
"So it’s not quite clear why the Prime Minister’s allies should be so worried about embarrassing disclosures. If we learn that he was distracted by personal dramas this time last year, that he missed big Covid briefings before the scale of the pandemic was clear, would it be such a shock? When he won his majority, his complicated personal life was incredibly well-documented. It’s hard to imagine what we could learn, now, that would really change what people think."
It now seems they were right to be concerned. This morning, The Telegraph and many other newspapers, say Cummings was the source of the leaked text messages from James Dyson.
What Nelson argues may turn out to be true. That the public know about all of his myriad flaws and accept them. It may even be the Conservative party's secret weapon, the reason they chose him in the first place. Johnson often does seem impervious to damaging revelations but this is what happens isn't it? They are impervious - until the moment they aren't.
The government looks like it’s being attacked on all fronts. The text messages Cummings is supposed to have leaked are about lobbying and the PM's way of conducting himself. The Greensill affair is about lobbying by ex ministers and it rumbles on, now the subject of eight enquiries. The Goodlaw project had their first day in court yesterday with a legal challenge against some of the PPE contracts:
“It is shocking that basic checks were missed and companies without proper certification were allowed to jump the queue,” said @RachelReevesMP. https://t.co/NbABiiWfLd
— Jo Maugham (@JolyonMaugham) April 22, 2021
Meanwhile The Sun goes with a headline 'DIRTY DEALS' Nearly £4billion worth of Covid PPE contracts appear to be corrupt, bombshell report reveals, which is about a report from Transparency International suggesting one in every five PPE contracts looks iffy.
The Goodlaw case is showing how civil servants were "drowning" under requests coming through the 'VIP channel' from MPs and ministers to give PPE contracts to companies, some of whom had only been set up a few weeks before receiving multi million pound orders.
Genuine suppliers were ignored in preference to companies who did not have any experience whatsoever with PPE, or very little, but had connections to the Tory party. Emails shown to the court seem to reveal a feeding frenzy as these 'suppliers' battled to get huge contracts. It looks pretty bad.
John Major’s administration came under fire about what now seems relatively trivial stuff, cash for questions and so on. Johnson’s lot are accused of far more serious things including favouring people with Tory party links with billions of pounds of PPE contracts when they had no track record.
Of course, nobody knows for sure who leaked the Dyson texts but the story that it was Cummings is on every front page which I think shows it's the official line from Downing Street - and they would know.
So, I re-read Nelson's article from March where he waived away any idea of a Cummings inspired campaign hurting Johnson's standing. It is fascinating. This is part of it, a month ago remember:
"So No10 is braced for impact – and has been for some time. When news recently broke about Carrie Symonds’s plans to redecorate the Downing Street flat, the Prime Minister was summoned by his officials, marched downstairs in his socks and given an emergency briefing. It was as if a war had broken out. Some of those around him seemed to think this was the beginning of a long, Cummings-inspired news missile attack: leak after leak after leak."
Getting a mere £60K from donors to redecorate Downing Street warranted an emergency briefing by officials and some in Downing Street at the time thought Cummings was planning a campaign of leaks - which is what we are now seeing. Nelson admits when Johnson recruited Cummings back in 2019, he was warned that it would "end in disaster" but as usual he wafted the advice away.
Nelson went on:
"While richly entertaining, the story [redecorating his flat with donor's money] was not really damaging. The Prime Minister is famously tight with money and (by his standards) rather short of it right now. Would it really be so surprising if he ended up in a fix, because his fiancée wanted an expensive residential makeover? The idea of a fundraiser to save them from the ignominy of John Lewis carpets is amusing. But not devastating. There are more stories about Dilyn, her dog: his yapping, attacking and even doing his business in a handbag of a senior official. But it’s hardly Watergate."
No, it wasn't Watergate, but Watergate is not far away. Cummings is probably aware of which stories are truly damaging and which just scratch the paint. Nelson himself thinks that the handling of the pandemic might be more difficult. Listen to this:
"What Cummings might say about Covid is a different matter. Recollections may vary, but he’ll have more than memories. He’ll have plenty of notes from a Prime Minister who likes to do his thinking out loud. To work with Boris Johnson is to be subject to all kinds of theories expounded over the course of a day. He likes to air arguments, to see how they sound – and stand up to scrutiny. He contradicts himself as a matter of routine."
Cummings is stupid (he backed Brexit without a plan) but he has street cunning and the stories will I'm sure be carefully calibrated - each being more damaging than the last. He starts with a few fireworks and will probably build up to a nuclear missile. I am not even convinced that Covid-19 is the nuclear option, they are probably worried about something much bigger.
As I write this I looked for a quote I seem to recall reading from an anonymous adviser or official who said something along the lines of 'if you think it looks bad from the outside it's far worse inside than you can ever imagine.'
When someone becomes PM after an election they acquire a certain status that cannot be emphasised enough. They have been chosen by the people and to challenge their authority is to challenge democracy itself. You become the man or woman at the very pinnacle of power. The Queen is theoretically above you but let's face it she is not going to constrain a democratically elected leader so essentially you have nothing except the rules and the law to provide a few boundaries and even they are ignored or changed to suit.
Part of that power is having a shield built around you, not just of security staff, but of people willing to deny reality, to create an illusion, on your behalf. So, I can believe it is much worse that we think. The press operation, the media and broadcasters, MPs and party officials are all involved to protect the PM and their own positions, They counter any hint of criticism by saying the PM is getting on with the business of government and the priorities of the people - that sort of stuff - as if he's above all that.
But it must grate after putting down the 'phone from some inquisitive journalist and looking at the shambling, chaotic, dishevelled Johnson, feet on the desk texting a mate or a girlfriend while officials try to get him to focus on the real business of government.
I am starting to think we are looking at the beginning of the end.
