Thursday 27 May 2021

The Cummings show - a review

Cummings' marathon session in front of the science and technology select committee yesterday was certainly entertaining, astonishing even. I only caught the first couple of hours although he did six or seven in total. He came across as being somewhere between Corporal Jones and private Fraser. He seems to have spent the first half of 2020 in Whitehall absolutely terrified, alternating between shouting “don’t panic” and forecasting “we’re all doomed.”

As usual with Cummings, everything and everybody was rubbish, but unusually for him he admitted that he himself was less than perfect (but still better than anyone else) and he actually apologised for the government's pandemic response. So, that’s progress I suppose

He was expected to deliver an assault on Johnson and the PM took a lot of heavy blows for sure, but in the event Cummings also poleaxed Matt Hancock with some real haymakers The health secretary was accused of lying to the PM (a genuine collectors piece there) and to the people about the acquisition of PPE and sending of patients back to care homes without being tested for Covid-19.

Cummings said he (and others right up to the cabinet secretary) had repeatedly called for Hancock to be sacked - for 15 or 20 different reasons according to the former senior adviser.

He said it was "crazy" that he was in such a senior position and "crackers" that Johnson was in Downing Street. He echoed something a lot of us feel that the choice between Johnson and Corbyn in 2019 was an indictment of democracy and the parties themselves.

Cummings admitted to his own shortcomings. “In any sensible rational government, it is completely crazy that I should have been in such a senior position. I’m not smart, I’ve not built great things in the world. It’s completely crackers that someone like me should have been in there, just the same as it’s crackers that Boris Johnson was in there.”

The litany of charges against Johnson and Hancock was too long to list.

Johnson sustained some damage for sure. We didn’t learn much that was new but Cummings confirmed most of what we already thought we knew. The PM never took the pandemic seriously and resisted locking down until the warnings became too hair raising to ignore.  

Twitter was heaving all day with dozens of journalists live-tweeting as the session went on. I must say I thought this tweet made a real point:

At one time I would have dismissed this as nonsense - but having been on Twitter for some time it is I am afraid spot on. The mainstream media have a lot to answer for.

Greg Clarke, chair of the committee was surprisingly razor-sharp, forensically questioning Cummings about the early days and the lack of an adequate response from the very top of government. Not only did Johnson miss COBRA meetings, Cummings never advised him to attend any of them and he didn’t even attend them all himself either!  He said it was thought best to keep Johnson away from COBRA meetings because the prime minister would have dismissed covid as little more than flu!  Stunning. Trump, Bolsanaro, Johnson, they are all out of the same stupid mould..

At one time, Johnson apparently offered to be injected with COVID live on TV by Chris Whitty to show it was harmless. No wonder he was shaking hands with all and sundry in a hospital last year before he caught the virus himself and became hospitalised.

The prime minister was described as being like a broken shopping trolley, rattling down the aisle veering wildly from side to side. Cummings said he changed his mind ten times a day and would ring journalists to contradict his own policies!  Listen to this item:

The best Twitter thread if you want a full account of it all was that by the BBC's Lewis Goodall in my opinion, which starts here:

Cummings is certainly a discredited messenger but what he had to say, without delivering a knock-out punch, will damage Johnson. It begs the question what did they find so attractive in each other?  They are an odd couple for sure.

He came in thinking he could reform Whitehall. He backed Johnson simply as a vehicle to get himself in to power. Johnson was equivalent to the £350 million claim for Cummings. Just a means to an end.  Once in, like plenty of men before him, he found the problems he thought were easy from the outside were not and he was well out of his depth.

Johnson thought Cummings a genius although it was clear that he was just a waffler, and seemed to think his adviser indispensable. He actually believed one man could reform Whitehall. When it came to it, he couldn't even reform himself.

As Beth Rigby as Sky News said, for such a senior advisor to so openly and comprehensively try to demolish a sitting prime minister is jaw-dropping. And whatever you think about Cummings' reliability as a witness, Johnson let him into the inner room, which means his testimony counts for something.

At the very centre of power in this, and any country, nobody expects the president or prime minister to personally do things, to design systems, nurse people back to health or take up a rifle in time of war. What they do expect is that there should be coordination, motivations and a sense of direction coming from the very top.

But under successive prime ministers the whole idea of cabinet government has completely broken down although one might think with the present gang this is a small mercy. But with Johnson there was no leadership, no focus, no coordination. The overriding impression I got from yesterday was that a lot of people were running around like headless chickens, conducted by Cummings who now admits he didn't really know what he was doing himself.

When the chips were down the paucity of clever, talented people around the cabinet table showed, Johnson's government was tested and fell apart when it mattered. The sheer incompetence of Boris Johnson cost a lot of people their lives.

He chose the ministers and advisers, cleared out anyone who was competent and set the tone from the top. It is all his fault, in my opinion. As Cummings himself admitted yesterday, the man he catapulted into Downing Street is unfit to be prime minister.

Many people think Gove is behind all of this. he would like to see the back of Johnson and he and Cummings go back a long way.  It can only stoke more tensions in Downing Street.  All good.


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