Dominic cummings

Remember ‘following the science’ on Covid? It feels like a while. That was supposed to be about how we responded to a new virus posing an existential threat to society. But we now seem to have moved on to a purely political phase, focussed on rules written in the early phase of the epidemic (based on incomplete and mistaken information) before it became clearer that the threat we face is pretty far from existential. While there’s plenty we don’t know about Covid, the big-picture science has been settled for some time already. As epidemics go it’s not that bad. It kills mainly the very old and infirm; children and fit

Dominic Cummings knows all about how perception damages public confidence in political parties. Here he is in June 2017: ‘People think, and by the way I think most people are right: ‘The Tory party is run by people who basically don’t care about people like me’. That is what most people in the country have thought about the Tory party for decades. I know a lot of Tory MPs and I am sad to say the public is basically correct. Tory MPs largely do not care about these poorer people. They don’t care about the NHS. And the public has kind of cottoned on to that.’ And this is what

Happy now? Thought not. Dominic Cummings has delivered his statement and answered questions but still the critics aren’t appeased. Not at all. In fact, the tenor of the questions that were put to him suggested that quite a few of the journalists lucky enough to be socially distancing in the Downing Street rose garden, plus those listening at a distance, hadn’t been listening to a word he said. Didn’t he realise that there were people out there who hadn’t seen their elderly parents or grandparents for months and how would they feel knowing that he’d been gadding up to Durham to see his? There were parents with dependent children who could

The rule of modern politics, let’s call it Trump’s first law, is that if you are being attacked for apparently breaking the rules, the best defence is to double down and insist that it is in fact you and your colleagues who have acted with the utmost integrity – and anyone who suggests otherwise is a knave or a fool. Such was how the prime minister defended his chief aide Dominic Cummings – who as I said just now in the daily Downing Street press conference breached not just one but at least three lockdown rules (don’t leave the house if someone in it has Covid-19 symptoms, don’t spend hours

One of the key committees advising the government is SAGE — the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies. At the weekend, there was a rumpus after the Guardian reported that Dominic Cummings had been present for some of its meetings; though given the enormity of what was being discussed there would have been problems if no one from Downing Street was at these meetings. Last night, Bloomberg reported on the SAGE meeting of 18 March. Alex Morales and Suzi Ring wrote that Dominic Cummings had at that meeting raised questions, including asking ‘why a lockdown was not being imposed sooner’. I am informed that at that meeting Tim Gowers, a Cambridge maths professor and

These are discombobulating times. A deadly pandemic; the United States at sea, China belligerent and the EU at war with itself. British politics was in flux before the virus hit. Now it is vertiginous. The Tory party, long seen as the guardian of the status quo, has been forced to change tack as it deals with the fallout. Keir Starmer, recently elected as Labour leader, will play a vital role in this realignment – but not one we would once have envisaged. Starmer’s election as Labour leader in the midst of coronavirus is a good thing. He is the anti-Corbyn for a Labour party looking for calm and stability after

There are a handful of big things to watch out for following Sir Philip Rutnam’s resignation as Home Office Permanent Secretary: Whether in laying out his case for constructive dismissal, evidence emerges that makes it impossible for Priti Patel to remain as home secretary. Whether other permanent secretaries and senior civil servants show solidarity with Rutnam, thus making it harder for Dominic Cummings to reform how they and civil servants support the Government, and harder for him to streamline the centre of government and the Cabinet Office. What the soon-to-be-published independent report into the scandal of the deportation of Windrush immigrants says about the competence of the Home Office and

How do you move on from a week of torrid headlines over a power struggle between senior No. 10 aides and a recently departed Chancellor? The old Tory playbook – mastered by Boris Johnson’s former election guru Lynton Crosby – would suggest throwing a dead cat. The dead cat strategy used when a party wishes to change the conversation by any means necessary. The idea is that by the time it’s done people will stop talking about the thing you want to move away from and instead become distracted and effectively go: ‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!’ It’s worth remembering this device when considering that we

If you thought Boris Johnson’s and Dominic Cummings’s culture war against the so-called London elite had ended with his decisive election victory, that it was simply a useful campaigning trope, you may have to rethink. Because Johnson’s chief aide Cummings reinforced the government’s excoriation of media and lawyers when addressing Downing Street officials this morning, in the words of one official present. Cummings described last night’s Court of Appeal suspension of the deportation of criminals to the Caribbean as ‘a perfect symbol of the British state’s dysfunction’. He said there must be ‘urgent action on the farce that judicial review has become’. The Tory manifesto promised a review of the

This week, a malign foreign actor invaded the British media, spreading disinformation and seeking to meddle in the general election. A malevolent force exploiting our democracy to advance its own interests. That’s right, Hillary Clinton has been in London. She has another book to promote, The Book of Gutsy Women, and she’s again talking about male authoritarian-ism, why Britain needs to be ‘forward-looking’ (i.e. not leave the European Union), and the menace of Russia. It doesn’t take an intelligence expert to decode her message: ‘I didn’t win in 2016 and I’m still livid.’ Clinton says she is ‘dumbfounded’ that the British government has decided not to publish a parliamentary report