Biting the Hand

In history there have always been those behind the scenes, tugging at the levers of power. Wives, mistresses, meddlesome priests; some unknown, some who have achieved notoriety, some written into the history books and others whose flame briefly flared then sputtered and died to become a mere footnote. What fate, I wonder, awaits Dominic Cummings?

Rasputin-like he appeared to instil fear and awe in his enemies and was never shy in naming them. Many cheered when he made public his mission to take on the establishment. Many felt that he had too much of a hold on Boris Johnson’s thinking, but the odd combination of the product of Eton and privilege alongside a bright student from relatively humble beginnings seemed to strike a chord.

The electorate gave this unlikely combo a mandate not seen in many years and watched as they set out to work. Cummings once described by a tutor as "fizzing with ideas, unconvinced by any received set of views… determined to bring down things that don’t work." Sought to recruit others to his factory of chaos, from which would emerge a new order, with Boris at the helm of a dreadnought of state.

It didn’t quite pan out. And even as Keir Starmer accuses Johnson of blaming everybody but himself, Cummings has come out and placed the blame squarely at the Prime Minister’s feet. In a recent statement he has declared it his mission to remove the PM from office, likening the task to ‘fixing the drains’.

Whilst few would disagree with many of his unflattering appraisals, he is hardly executing his plot in the requisite Machiavellian manner. No iron fist in a velvet glove for him, but a massive, all-too obvious demolition ball which threatens to bring down not just the figurehead but the whole edifice. Never particularly likeable, or convivial, always a bit of a misanthrope, he now seems more like a Marvel super-villain, plotting the destruction of the world he has never really understood. The world of humans turned its back on him, but he will wreak his revenge, mwuhahahaa!

Post politics, Boris will continue to enjoy fame and notoriety and no doubt a wide circle of shallow but fun friends. It is doubtful anybody will want to consult his genius, but neither will he haunt the world stage like the wizened Phantom of the Opera, Tony Blair, forever seeking ever more influence. Boris will move on, pen a few well remunerated newspaper articles, write the odd book and grow disgracefully old.

Cummings plots his next move...

Cummings, on the other hand will barely be remembered. No Robespierre, he, as that same tutor suggested. No power behind the throne, no architect of change. No doubt he will find himself leading an uninfluential think tank, poorly funded and far from any inner circle. If he is likened to any well-known character it will probably be Gollum. Crazed, enraged and forever looking for his precious, apparently unaware that the key to his reward was Boris himself.

Doubling Down

Who could have predicted it; after three and a half years of Parliament and the media doing their level best to scupper Brexit  a team steps up with the balls and the popular appeal to demand that the will of the British people be honoured. An 80-seat majority for a Conservative government was a dream after ten years of compromise and half-arsed virtue signalling. At last we could get on and rebuild the country after the damage wreaked by the last Labour government and their project to screw our demographic makeup.

Deficit neutralised, debt repayment well on track and Brexit in the finishing straight, we could finally relax the minimal austerity programme and begin work on improving productivity, education, the health service, transport and infrastructure with no serious opposition. After the general election even the Remain lobby seemed to have finally accepted their defeat and plunge into irrelevance. But then along comes a gift.

Who could have predicted the corona virus outbreak? In fact if some opinions are taken into consideration, WHO should have predicted it. The still new government took command and control and did what every western government did. They watched, took advice, waited, regarded the experience of other countries then launched what seemed to be the only plausible short-term solution; lockdown.

The press was ecstatic; here was the chance they had been waiting for – because no matter what any government did, it could be spun as the wrong thing. At every stage. Deeper lockdown; why not earlier? Lifting the lockdown; why not now? After the lockdown: more deaths bad, but also fewer deaths bad because too much lockdown. Astute spanner throwers could see that whatever the government response was, they could persuade people that it was clumsy, incompetent or poorly communicated.

But still the public broadly supported the government, most of us logically figuring that their handle on the situation was always going to be better than ours. Other countries’ experiences could be edited , as with statistics to tell whatever story the press wanted to tell. If such-and-such has plenty of PPE why don’t we? Well Thisland didn’t lock down and nobody died. And Thatland has been testing since day one. And of course, the darling of the left, Jacinda Arden, managed New Zealand’s perfect response.

The fact that what has happened in every country is largely a matter of fortune, good or bad, is irrelevant. There is no news, good or bad, that cannot be pressed into criticism of our situation. And of course the press still wields powerful influence because once a hackneyed hack has invented an attack line, many of the public will subsume it into their psyche and say they always thought this way. Hypocrisy is built into the human model; it is remarkably effective and the press have pressed every button they could put their grubby fingers on.

Still it was not enough to shift public opinion away from Boris’s crew… but then there was Dom. The bête noire of the chattering classes; a man with a brain so big nobody could fathom its depths. A man with a disdain for idiots that could be pressed into service in the line of toppling the government. A figure to hate, and hate comes so readily to the left-leaning that all they had to do was paint him as the evil genius who deliberately engineered the corona crisis in order to hurt poor people… who he despises!

At last there was a chance to revive all the old animosities. It has been widely reported that during the illnesses of both the PM and his closest advisor a plot was hatched to quietly extend the Brexit transition period. Another bite at the remain cherry in some eyes; an opportunity to engineer the softest of Brexits. But Cummings put a stop to that on his return to duty, thus incurring the wrath of some very senior civil servants.  A leak here, a word in the ear there and the race was on to pin something on him.

I'm not alleging conspiracy, but...

There can be absolutely no doubt that the pursuit of Cummings is entirely political; people have done far worse without being censured in any way. But as flimsy as it is Durhamgate is the red square they have bet all their remaining stake on. Even the virus has been abandoned in the unseemly melee to destroy this man. But I have a suspicion he is made of sterner stuff and I hope that Boris stands by his man. When the wheel stops spinning, let’s hope it lands on black.

Panto Season

It’s behind you! Oh no it isn’t! As the press pack crowd together, totally abandoning any pretence at social distancing, but knowing full well that their transgression will be ignored, they focus on the minutiae of events of six weeks ago. Just like a pantomime plot, their aim couldn’t be more transparent; harass and hound a man they hate until he snaps or is snapped. But this man is not for snapping, it seems.

The Dominic Cummings hate industry has grown from being a cottage affair to become a seething, polluted and festering metropolis; every broadcast ‘news’ outlet is Cumming 24-7. Confected outrage has been whipped up among the public who, as ever, bark on command. Sitting here, working from home I hear, one after another, callers to phone-in shows repeating the words the press have planted in their clouded minds.

The media is the message. This isn’t anything to do with seeking the truth. This is blind hatred and possibly fear of one slightly built man who yesterday comprehensively shot their fox. The press conference really should have been the end of it, but in any pantomime a willing suspension of disbelief is necessary to endure the hackneyed script that we have heard a thousand times before. Our fox cannot be dead, they cried, for we have not been satisfied.

Today the pursuit continues unabated. Disaffected Tories join with the remain establishment and the unruly gallery does its best to drown out the voices onstage. By now, Mr Cummings is at least as vilified as Charles Manson, or perhaps Anders Breivik. I mean, he was already ‘literally Hitler’; a super-villain for the social media age, a Moriarty to the Meeja’s Sherlock, a Machiavelli for the moment.

But now the story becomes ‘why’? Why hasn’t he stepped down? Why hasn’t he made a grovelling apology to the genius reporters who ‘forensically’ examined all the evidence that he himself actually laid before them? Why hasn’t he shown humility and shame for being in a better position than many who are enduring lockdown in flats and back-to-back houses in northern suburbs? How dare he not break down and beg forgiveness?

Quite simply, because he has no case to answer. I am not just slavishly toeing the Johnson line here; I am no uncritical BoJo fanboy. Others have pointed out that Stephen Kinnock wasn’t censured for visiting his parents, that Ian Blackford took himself over the sea to Skye. I couldn’t care less because none of them endangered anybody. But only Cummings has been so brazenly challenged over an issue which is long past its sell-by date.

I'm waiting for the ugly sisters...

Now it is the press who have questions to answer. Why are you so afraid of this one man? How is it that you have failed to land a single blow in all your skirmishes? How come the rules and guidelines you accuse him of breaking don’t apply to you? Haven’t you got some actual news to report? Why do you need the country to hate him so much? Will you only be satisfied if your actions cause permanent harm to him and his family? And shouldn’t you all be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves?