Boris and Cummings’ words are coming back to bite

Unlike many of his critics, I do not particularly think of Dominic Cummings as a Keyser Soze figure, a devilish master of the black arts whose influence has assumed mythical dimensions. Nor do I even consider him a Rasputin-type advisor, corrupting the government and leading it astray for reasons, well, for reasons that are never quite or fully explained.

So I am not vexed, far less appalled, that the prime minister’s chief advisor sometimes sits in on the meetings of advisory committees. Indeed, it might be just as surprising – and just as surely fodder for his critics – if he, or one of his colleagues, did not attend some of these discussions.

But then I think Cummings an interesting man with some interesting things to say. And I think he is sometimes right, too, not least when he argues that ‘Systems are fragile and vulnerable to nonlinear shocks: ‘big things come from small beginnings’ and problems cascade; ‘they come not single spies/But in battalions’.