The shiny new government elected barely two months ago, seems to be falling apart in front of our eyes. Brexit Johnson is limping from one PR disaster to another. Government has an air of incompetent bedlam about it with no strategy at all. As we embark on the most important negotiations for generations which will set the course this country follows for many years, we seem to be drifting with a career psychopath at the wheel and the captain carousing in his quarters.
Cummings, the man at the tiller, comes in for some stick in this report by Luke McGee at CNN: There's a dark side to Boris Johnson's government and even his allies are fed up with it. It's clear that some Conservative MPs are worried that he is out of control. Cummings is described in the piece as "a control freak and a brutal disruptor who loathes convention and the political establishment in equal measure".
The PMs senior adviser is thought by many to be actually running the government single handed. McGee says he believes himself to be more intelligent than everybody else but has an image among those who know him as a someone who "could easily blow himself up trying to fix his own boiler because he thinks the plumber is an idiot." There seems to be a strong smell of gas in Whitehall at the moment.
Priti Patel is causing havoc at the Home Office. A few days ago it emerged a senior official collapsed after an all nighter and a confrontation with the Home Secretary, now we learn the head of immigration, Mark Thomson, the director general of UK Visas and Immigration and HM Passport Office, has announced his departure. This is a few days after announcing new immigration rules that nobody seems to like or think will work.
Lucy Fisher, the Sunday Times defence correspondent, says the recently announced Strategic Defence Review is in danger of unravelling before it's even started:
"A government source said that there was consternation about a series of “has-beens” who had been appointed to the review. Insiders believe Dominic Cummings was behind the departure of Christopher Brannigan, the defence lead in the No 10 policy unit, last week."
Lord West, a former First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, says,"There’s a nasty atmosphere at the moment from No 10. The spads advising seem terrified. It’s worrying to hear a senior defence aide has been sacked".
The review is supposed to report in the middle of the year, a timetable that those involved think is wholly unrealistic. Does this sound familiar?
Jill Rutter from the Institute for Government has tweeted about the odd position of David Frost, our chief negotiator with Brussels. He is a Spad (Special adviser) although he was once a civil servant, he isn't at the moment. The spad's code makes it clear that they are not supposed to "take public part in political controversy, through any form of statement whether in speeches or letters to the press". Yet here he is apparently managing the negotiations (he's not supposed to do that either) and making official speeches setting out the government's position.
On Frost's speech, Anthony Cary, a former diplomat, says that his view of the EU is that of the tabloid press. Cary says it's tragic for the UK "that it should have become the caricature peddled by a Govt with an unassailable majority, and it is extraordinary that someone of Frost’s capacity and experience could genuinely see the world in those terms."
It is almost as if Frost is conducting the negotiations on a rather distorted but personal basis and according to his own mandate.
And David Dimbleby, surely the very epitome of BBC impartiality, speaking to German television says Johnson is a "liar", "untrustworthy" and "arrogant".
To top it all this morning Tim Shipman at The Sunday Times is reporting that aides have been told to send him shorter memos, limited to just two sides of A4. Civil servants have also been told to cut the number of documents put into the prime minister’s red box to "make sure that he reads them". If the memos are too long Cummings sends them back "with savage comments".
It also turns out that while the country was hit by severe flooding, Johnson spent a week at Chevening, the PM's grace and favour mansion between Biggin Hill and Sevenoaks, with his girlfriend Carrie Symmonds. Usually the PM grants a senior member of the cabinet the use of the house, instead he uses it himself. No wonder he's not been seen. Just back from Mustique he apparently needs another break.
These sort of stories appear in the press when those inside the bubble begin to get worried about the decisions being made and the direction of travel. I certainly expect many more in the coming months. What emerges is a government leaderless and in chaos while the prime minister wanders around a 15 bedroom mansion on the North Downs like a distracted medieval monarch with his mistress, having got bored by it all in just eight weeks.
I always thought that it would end badly for Brexit Johnson, described by Max Hastings, his former employer, as manically disorganised, but I really didn't think it would start so badly.
It's all downhill from here. Bring it on.
I always thought that it would end badly for Brexit Johnson, described by Max Hastings, his former employer, as manically disorganised, but I really didn't think it would start so badly.
It's all downhill from here. Bring it on.
