Tuesday 6 July 2021

Cummings on Johnson

Johnson's former senior adviser Dominic Cummings has published another blistering blog post with the PM the object of yet more vitriol.  DC has gone into full-time business with his attacks on Johnson. Whereas before his blog used to be free to access, now you have to subscribe at £10/month or £100 per year to get his stuff first hand. Naturally, I don't pay but within hours those that do are posting the juiciest snippets and so it was yesterday.  Peter Jukes at Byline Times doing the heaviest lifting.

Some of the quotes are literally jaw dropping and it's hard to think of another world leader, except Trump, which they could be said of without seeing huge headlines the following day. But in the mainstream media we see almost nothing. In the pro-Brexit press literally nothing - because it isn't really 'news'.  We know most of it already.

The BBC have a report which takes the edge off a lot of it but still has Cummings claiming Johnson "regularly admits it's ludicrous he's prime minister" and that he (Johnson) is "hopeless at bureaucratic infighting," and "routinely says and does things so foolish that people are open-mouthed".

Cummings also admits he knew Mr Johnson was "in any objective sense, unfit to be PM" when he agreed to become his senior adviser in summer 2019.

A few more examples of direct quotes from Cummings, (courtesy of Mr Jukes) and remember these are from a man who was at Johnson's side for nearly eighteen months. I doubt anyone knows him better.

“He rewrites reality in his mind afresh according to the moment’s demands. He lies — so blatantly, so naturally, so regularly — that there is no real distinction possible with him, as there is with normal people, between truth and lies. “

“Boris is complex portrayed as simple. Behind each mask lies another mask — but there’s no masterplan behind all the masks, just the age old ‘will to power’. “

“The Foreign Office experience is a severe warning of the dangers ahead. Boris won’t read the papers. He cannot chair meetings to save his life. He has no idea how Whitehall works and has no interest in it. He wants to believe everyone loves him”

“We knew he was, in any objective sense, unfit to be PM. We also knew that he knew too, since he’d told us.”

“He is totally untrusted by anybody in No10 yet has a superpower for making people feel sorry for him — ‘I feel sorry for him like my old dead-beat boyfriend, I hate myself for it but I can’t help it’, said one in despair after a particularly dreadful meeting.”

“He is both much more useless than the media portray and much more capable of self-awareness and ruthlessness than they ever portray, or his enemies usually discern… He was desperate to be Prime Minister but has almost no interest in the job.”

Cummings to Johnson in summer 2019: “we just keep bulldozing. Prorogue. Refuse Royal Assent. Whatever. They’re trying to overthrow the biggest democratic vote ever, we’re entitled to use extreme measures to stop them” - explains A LOT

Johnson on Government: “What a farce these meetings are, I’m running the government like the old Speccie conferences [i.e when he was editor of The Spectator], I love it, it’s great fun, but my god it’s no way to run a bloody country.’’

Peter Foster at the FT tweeted this one:

Brexit was the battering ram that Cummings used to get things done. He has said before it was the biggest democratic vote ever (it wasn't) and had to be respected (it was advisory but you can see where he was coming from). Both he and Frost used Johnson and the power of the PM's office to force Brexit through in any way they wanted, because Johnson had the authority but no clue how to use it himself.

But Cummings' idea that Brexit should be done in the face of "the rule of law" is telling. Without the rule of law we don't have democracy anyway. Democracy is built on the rule of law I would have thought.

As for Johnson's time as Foreign Secretary, you might be interested in this tweet from Denis MacShane:

This is not that different to Matt Hancock at Health appointing Gina Coladelangelo, firstly as an unpaid adviser and then to the supervisory board of the DHSC.  What was Ms Symonds expertise in British foreign policy?  How often did they even discuss policy?

He desperately wanted to be PM but has almost no interest in the job. It was just to show he could do it and have "great fun" at our expense - presumably including with Ms Symonds.

How have we ended up with such a man in Downing Street and with a handsome majority?  Don't blame Johnson for it all, we knew what he was like, we were warned over and over again what he was like and he hasn't disappointed. In fact he has probably been worse.  The people chose him and they are now reaping the reward.

Finally, I am starting to worry about John Redwood. He perhaps ought to think about getting himself sectioned:

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