"Tens of thousands of people died, who didn't need to die," Mr Cummings said. So we wriggled thro with best option we cd & intended to get the to ditch bits we didn't like after whacking Corbyn. The Foreign Offices belief that EU membership brings more global influence cuts no ice. Swing voters do do not think the government has achieved anything they think the government has kept the floodgates open and made the problem worse. (We did not try to bin GCSEs themselves an important distinction.) If there were to be a renegotiation, the two things they most want are control of immigration and send less money. This is supported by all serious market research. Itswritten in hasteand please send corrections, comments etc to dmc2.cummings@gmail.com. Whenever you read the CBI said, remember they also said 1997-1999 that we HAD to join the euro or else inward investment would flood out. And that message needs to be heard around the world, because if the British government doesnt honour its agreements, doesnt adhere to treaties it signs, that must apply to everyone else too. If No10 gets serious and stops trying to force DfE to do stupid things, Ill go back to my history books and rocking chair. The reason the polls do not move is that nobody believes a word they say! Many Tory MPs think that if Cameron gives more speeches on immigrationand stresses the governments achievements this would be a big help for the Party in the next election. I was Director of Research then Campaign Director of Business for Sterling and the 'no' campaign (to stop Britain joining the euro) 1999-2002. northwood dominic cummings. The Government rhetoric was: We put a shield around people in care homes. That was complete nonsense. Read about our approach to external linking. Game over. If Miliband hires a proper chief of staff and campaigns on the message I wont put up your taxes and you cant afford another five years of Cameron so vote for change, Cameron is finished. As they say in Moscow, everybodys right and everybodys unhappy. In summer 2020, me, two Cabinet Secretaries & other advisers told the PM: fire Hancock & get a plan + for NHS workforce over summer or else the system will cascade to worse & worse failure. The Dominic Cummings scandal, or the Dominic Cummings affair, was a series of events involving the British political strategist Dominic Cummings during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.The events include at least one journey that Cummings, then-chief adviser of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and his family made from London to County Durham after the start of a national lockdown in . ), Formally, spads are not supposed to manage processes and operations. It also shows how persistent the form of constitutions can be long after the reality has changed. Universal Credit not happening, bloody IDS. Mr Cummings also compared the Governments response to the pandemic to a meme. Before the 2001 and 2005 elections, immigration was less of a worry than it is now and people concluded I dont believe the Tories promises on immigration and tax and they dont care about public services because theyre the party of the rich. They will surely also want to know whether, after being forced into a second lockdown, the prime minister really did shout that he would rather let the bodies pile high than have a third. The puppeteer pulls the string, and a nation jerks accordingly. Understandably, the media story about spads is that they are spin doctors. every financial model being wrong) and squeezing time scales (no this wont start in 2014 it will start in September 2011, heres how etc). Faculty also declined to say what they were for. Anyway, I can see why some people think just saying Macmillan doesnt mean hes terrible and I agree, but read the 2004 speech too when read in the context of how he mismanages No10, what I mean will be clearer. Dominic Cummings drove 260 miles (418km) from London to Durham, and took a 60-mile round trip from Durham to a nearby town on his wife's birthday - a trip he says he made to test whether his . Im not saying this is better than being a committed party member, Im just explaining motives. The consequences of our inability to develop political institutions able to think wisely about the biggest problems in order to pre-empt some crises to win without fighting as Sun Tzu put it are ever greater because scientific progress also brings ever greater destructive possibilities. In the Times interview there are little dots after my Macmillan reference because my original quote was something like picture of Macmillan on the wall and he gave that Keith Joseph speech in 2004, thats all you need to know. He believes lessons of the Brexit vote should be applied not only to future political campaigns, but also to government. The fundamental problem the Conservative Party has had since 1997 at least is that it is seen as the party of the rich, they dont care about public services. If his judgement about people were not so bad and he hired a deadly serious chief of staffand did what they told him instead of being the nations uber-pundit, then he could beat Miliband easily as Miliband seems to have an even worse operation than No10 and is failing to take advantage of the extremely favourable landscape. For the next 150 years, those at the apex of British politics made colossal error after error. Markets and science show that some fields of human endeavour work much better than political decision-making. 9. Boris Johnsons chief adviser declines to explain reason for payments to Faculty. PM stupidly dismisses problems, focuses on media trivia then goes on holiday, he said, referring to Johnsons current break in Marbella. Until there is a formal public inquiry in which all sides of the story can be aired, he remains the single most authoritative source on what happened inside government during one of this countrys darkest moments. [NB. Because his policy lurches in response to pressure, it never solves his problems. BoJo's best bud, bus lie writer, government tinkerer, not Benedict Cumberbatch #voteleave #fakenews. I make judgements about people and ideasindividually for me parties are just a vehicle of convenience, not something that define my choices, likes, and ideas. He may by his own account have struggled to get the prime minister to listen to him, but Dominic Cummings . 2. When we got rid of levels from the Curriculum because great teachers told us they were rubbish and were used by Ofsted to enforce bad practices on schools everybody with power in the school system complained. A quarter of a century later, for the third time our leadership was intellectually, psychologically, and institutionally unprepared to deal with the question of deterring Germany and we tottered into another world war for which we were unprepared. I focused on priorities, keeping a weather eye on the umpteen mini-disasters per day, trying to stop them becoming big problems, while spending most of my time on (b). (Many of the social science academics who write letters attacking Gove often Marxist economists still in the pre-1989 jungle, literary theorists, and others from the lowest ranks of academia are appalled at the idea of techniques from the hard sciences invading their domains and exposing their frauds. First published on Wed 13 Oct 2021 04.59 EDT. p.18) in which people think that swing voters occupyan average point equidistant between a Right pole and a Left pole. He denied that he was the source for the BBC story about texts between the Prime Minister and Lord Dyson, in which Mr Johnson said he would fix a tax issue for the businessman relating to a potential contract to develop ventilators. I told MG I was leaving in September 2013 and I left in January 2014 partly because I did not want to be involved with the election. Many punditswrite about the Tory 2001 and 2005 campaigns as if they were models of brilliant campaigning they tested X to destruction, if they didnt work, what could? But the failures of 2001 and 2005 were merely proofs that the Party was led by people who did not understand the countrys priorities or effective political action and the campaigns were very poor (2001 was appalling, 2005 less so). You know that Spiderman meme with both Spidermans pointing at each other. He suggested she had distracted Boris Johnson from taking key . In the past few months, between days of wading in concrete (where I am today no interviews Im afraid) Ive been pottering around the country talking to people about politics and our education reforms. Facultys recent government work has been its involvement in creating a Covid-19 datastore to help senior government officials respond to the pandemic. I told every new person in this team we are honest about our mistakes with each other and Michael. Does anybody think our current system is thinking wisely about possible equivalents to the rise of Germany post-1870, such as autonomous robotics, synthetic biology, the rise of China, or the collision of Islam with modernity? The biggest change in the EU debate since the the euro battle is that people now spontaneously connect the issue of immigration and the EU. . I think handled right, given overall situation (energy etc), we cd ditch signif bits causing trouble in NI without much fuss. Dominic Cummings @Dominic2306 33/ True but also UK gvt did v badly, turned out we cd/shd have had these tests at millions p/day scale by Sep latest, instead of seriously *starting* in Sep, which wd have greatly changed q42020. People also repeatedly mention the guy with the hook, Hamza, who combines immigration, benefits, Europe, and human rights in one striking story. 2023 BBC. The Scott Trust, the ultimate owner of the Guardian, is the sole investor in GMG Ventures, which is a minority shareholder in Faculty. It is a tendency of political columnists to polarise every column so Gaby polarises to pragmatists and kamikazes but I would suggest that if one wants to over-simplify it would be more accurate to label the two sides focused planners and unfocused pundits, with Cameron being self-evidently in the latter category. Shape without form, shade without colour. If the EU remains in control of immigration, renegotiation would be seen as a failure and would make peoplemorelikely to vote out, as renegotiation would raise expectations then increase anger. The 55 Tory MPs critical of Cummings, but . Boys Top 50 Returners in Every Field Event! This does not mean that swing voters dont really care that much about immigration and lower taxes as many pundits will claim. Mr Cummings said he asked the Cabinet Secretary to investigate, who came back and said: It is completely untrue, I have lost confidence in the Secretary of States honesty in these meetings.. E) One of the biggest misconceptions about Gove is he doesnt listen to argument. By Gordon Rayner, Associate Editor 18 January 2022 7:36pm. Like quite a few pieces it wrongly says Im a libertarian. My job. He added: "They took another terrible dive after the second lockdown in October because the prime minister knew that I blamed him for the whole situation - and I did - and by 31 October our relations were essentially already finished "The heart of the problem was, fundamentally, I regarded him as unfit for the job. Part of the reason No10 does not work is that senior people issue airy instructions (usually in response to a column rather than as part of a serious plan) but, not understanding management, they do not know how to follow through and ensure things are done. For Sale: 252500 - Residential, 2 bed, 1 bath, 1,456 sqft at 5022 PILGRIM ROAD in Lauraville. But Mr Cummings said he told him not to use the analogy, which was "not right", as - according to data expert Ben Warner - Covid was "spreading exponentially and killing hundreds of thousands of people". Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Boris Johnson, and his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, right, last September at the rear of Downing Street, London. His team argues with him non-stop. We took over a party on ~10%, worst constitutional crisis in century, much of deep state angling for BINO or 2REF. Dominic Cummings, 48, ran the pro-Brexit Vote Leave campaign in the EU referendum and was behind the group's "take back control" slogan; Prior to the referendum he worked for Iain Duncan Smith . E.g. But of course Cameron wont do this because he really does not understand all the criticism of his operation. For Cameron, hes dealing with an incredibly complex environment (true), in which some things are bound to go wrong (true), as well as could be expected (wrong!). did hephaestus divorce aphrodite Order Supplement. For a man caricatured as an evil genius, there is a distinct lack of genius in Dominic Cummings's evil plan to get rid of the Prime . Sadly, he wouldnt do it. Thatcher dealt with some of the worst excesses of accumulated errors and weakness. GivenCamerons team, it was obvious from the start that any sort of serious communication was impossible, which is one of the reasons the media was my bottom priority. Judge of the Nations, spare us yet / Lest we forget lest we forget, warned Kipling at the Diamond Jubilee in 1897, but Whitehall forgot 1870 and we were barely spared. The media naturally focus on the media but the important lessons about the DfE for people who want to change things are about project managing priorities in dysfunctional bureaucracies. The genius of the long accusatory threads Cummings has recently taken to posting on Twitter, in which he dangles information but strictly on his own terms, is that theyre now drawing half the country into the same faintly compromising game.