As the FT suggested thus morning:
Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's chief adviser, dramatically announced his resignation on Thursday night, in what is expected to signal the start of an exodus of Vote Leave veterans from Downing Street.
I have tweeted this in reaction:
So Cummings is quitting? How very typical of a wrecker. Smash the place up, and get out before having to accept responsibility or mange the consequences. The ultimate in cowardice. And the surest evidence he never really believed in Brexit at all.
— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) November 13, 2020
I thought about elaborating this further here. But, what is there to add?
That this is the reality of populism, as a force only intent on destruction, laid bare before us?
And that the implication is, very clearly, that Johnson's days are numbered as well?
Or that this signals that Brexit was only ever a game for these people? An exercise to see if they could ‘win' by manipulation?
Plus, that now the era of managing the fallout begins, and it will be ghastly?
I think all those things are true.
But what I suspect is that few - maybe Cummings and Johnson apart - appreciate just how bad the wreckage that they have created will be. Which means there is little to celebrate in this.
Except, perhaps, that unlike Trump they might depart peacefully.
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Thanks Richard for that observation. On a separate but not unrelated issue could I point out that we no longer hear so much on the MSM about our wealth creators. All these great UK businesses who create all this wealth that trickles down to us lesser mortals. Could the silence possibly relate to the fact that Covid 19 may have shown this to be a myth? When ordinary people cease to use the busses, planes, trains, pubs and restaurants etc everything seems to collapse. It also appears that an eat out to help out scheme had done wonders for the GDP figures while simultaneously spreading covid wide and far. Analysing and quantifying all the wreckage created by this government might make an excellent study topic for someone sometime.
I am sure it will….
Cummings has still been a brilliant campaign manager on a number of occasions. He’s clearly glad to be going although it’s surreal that people who wanted him out of a job a long time ago were unaware he said long ago that he would be gone by year end and are now expressing hostile feelings towards him leaving now. I wish his family and disabled son well in whatever they do next.
Time now for the British public to be given what they voted for which is a sort of 50:50 relationship with the EU, while not technically being a member. There are wreckers on both sides who can’t accept the vote was close and that the public are sick of it.
I guess a troll had to appear…..
Your incomprehension of what is going to happen and how much the people of this country did not want it is staggering
Cummings has been an utter disaster for so many people in this country. It is very easy to break things; but takes so much longer to rebuild.
And the continuing dishonesty of what Brexit means is an utterly miserable thing.
I guess we will see Johnson bowing out in 2021 – seems Cummings beat him to it.
John You seem to suggest a Norway type deal. It would not be extreme enough for the ERG n the Conservative party. They stopped that sort of deal which Mrs May might have pulled off.
Oh, let’s not be beastly to the pathological liar and sociopath… He has a disabled child.
Pass me the smelling salts.
A great many people have
And they live on wholly inadequate universal credits with insufficient support in most cases
My thoughts exactly. A repulsive individual. As Richard has said, he’s off just before the disaster his so-called ‘genius’ has helped to bring about occurs. An arrogant, destructive psychopath. And an utter hypocrite. Oxbridge educated with a Humanities degree, lives in Islington in a multimillion pound house…what was that about metropolitan elites?
Probably off to pursue his culture wars idiocy I imagine. For, no doubt, a generous remuneration from some rich right wing backer.
Perhaps he’ll go and help the Reform Party to continue his path of total destruction of UK. I wish him nothing but ill – however badly that reflects on me.
Cummings has finally realised that when the lorries start stacking up at Dover and Calais and the nightmare bureaucracy of import and export regulations, tariffs etc. hit hard on Ist January 2021, his name will be mud.
He’s also out of town on rail before any employment tribunal hearing for Ms Khan, conveniently. Wonder who will be stumping up for that little bit of authoritarian misogyny? The taxpayer I suspect.
A good question – since there is no such thing as Government Money, and there’s only taxpayers’ money, as Sunak reminded us recently, shortly before earmarking a few more billions from the BoE, it must be us then, unless Cummings is digging into his own pocket.
How exactly is he paid for and can the PM hire as many Cummings as he likes?
Cummings might not be going in the front door of No. 10, but it’s certain he’ll be having his say. After all he’s the one, as the saying goes, that knows where all the bodies are buried.
Richard
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/13/special-adviser-sacked-by-dominic-cummings-to-receive-payoff
I sincerely hope that the payoff bill should be paid by Mr Cummings. I’m not holding my breath on this!!
It won’t be
People like Cummings will come and go.
The real problem is the rampant lying about taxation and sovereign money production for the public good.
Maybe if this was tackled, the likes of Cummings and other political advisor-knobs like Steve Hilton wouldn’t get a look-in?
Should we not be asking, what sort of crackpot would ever consider employing someone with these potty eugenicist ideas?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/19/sabisky-row-dominic-cummings-criticised-over-designer-babies-post
Bloody hell – he’s gone!
We should all be outside applauding.
As long as places like Oxford and Cambridge go on producing extreme sociopaths like this, they’ll never have credibility in my eyes.
🙂
Ah but he’s working from home…
http://www.progressivepulse.org/brexit/perhaps-three-mothers-might-save-us
It has been an extraordinary soap opera today. I just wish I had the confidence there was a positive reason – like Johnson has finally noticed that the UK needs some sort of relationship with Europe (the election of Biden could have been influential there) wheras Cummings and Cain have stuck to their mantra of destroying UK business and undermining any political or diplomatic influece we might have in the future. But actually they have already painted themselves into a position where any future relationship will be disadvantageous compared with options that they have already ruled out.
I should point out to Pilgrim Slight Return that Oxford and Cambridge didn’t “produce” Cummings, the problem is in people who choose an O&C candidate over alternatives without looking at whether they are any good for the particular job. (I may be generous to Cummings here, but I am sure there exist niches where his talents could be of value, but nowhere near Downing Street).
We can’t now give him the mop and tell him to clear up the mess he’s made.
Jonathan
You know that I was going disagree with you – right?
As long as Oxbridge continues to pump economic bullshit into its students who do stuff like PPE courses and whose alumni then go on to be prime ministers then they ARE producing people whom we could do without.
I’m sorry but academia is one of the biggest pushers of orthodox economic thinking – it lends a lot of the libertarian guff legitimacy and it is not on. As long as this continues to happen, some really bad ideas will maintain the thin veneer of credibility.
So, there you are.
Pilgrim Slight Return – but I thought Cummings didn’t study PPE? However you may be right that Oxford and Cambridge economics teaching sticks closer to old fashioned orthodoxy than other places, it is not something I know about.
The irony is that Cummings may well have been the only influential person in Downing Street to understand that it wasn’t a big deal for the government to issue itself with the money it needed to deal with a crisis. At least, that is the impression I got from newspaper analyses around funding furlough etc, it seems everyone else was worried about “balancing the books”.
Almost all universities teach hopeless,y outdated and inappropriate economics
Jonathan
Try watching the documentary about the 2008 crash – ‘Inside Job’.
Watch it and see what you think? It does go into the problem of academia supporting faulty economic thinking and if you become interested, there’s plenty more for you to go at. It’s a huge problem.
“Almost all universities teach hopeless,y outdated and inappropriate economics”
Says the one who can’t get a job teaching economics at university
I have taught political economy, which I would suggest is vastly more interesting
And I quite strongly suspect my reaching is not over
What I can say is your history here is
Didn’t Cameron call him a ” career psychopath ” ?
no love lost there. then
let’s hope for everyone’s sake he doesn’t test his eye-sight before a trip to Durham on the M25