Apparently Dominic Cummings, an adviser to the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has committed some terrible crime worthy of setting the entire press pack on his trail. As to what that crime is, well, it’s being Dominic Cummings. Stories about him breaking lockdown to travel are merely misdirections, perhaps a hook to hang the pursuit upon but not the underlying cause at all.
This is directly analogous to the treatment of President Trump by large parts of the press in the United States, and for the same reason too. It’s that swamp-draining idea, something that is clearly going to be opposed by every inhabitant of said swamp.
What Cummings is accused of is that his wife had COVID-19, and he was fairly sure (since they live in the same home) that he was going to get it. Their 4-year-old child was recently diagnosed with autism, and the only family members who could care for the child were the grandparents, 250 miles away. The grandparents actually have an empty house, ideal for isolation, but where it was possible to leap in and conduct child care if necessary, if both parents suffered badly from the virus.
To explain a little more, 250 miles is a long way in English terms. This is not just driving to the next city over as it might be on America’s dense East Coast. It’s regarded as a major trip. As this all occurred during the lockdown, then what a stick to beat him with.
That’s not what Cummings actually did wrong, though. Friends of mine have worked with him, and it’s not just that he doesn’t suffer fools gladly — not the greatest of recommendations for working in politics where they abound. It’s that he really is driven to change the entire system. We Brits have our political swamp just as you have Beltway bureaucrats, and Cummings wants to drain the whole thing.
He wants to end the cozy conveyor belt from the right university through a few advisory non-jobs into political power, the one that ends up with people who have never actually done anything then end up ruling the country. This happens with very little regard to what is actually being done; the importance is that the ruling is being done by the right people regardless of party. There’s a gentle swap each few years perhaps, the Left slides into office, the Right into the sinecures, then a reversal now and again. But nothing ever really changes, the bureaucracy and governance continue on as before with only the nameplates changing.
Cummings wants to change this, as Trump says he does. Let’s have actual policies which really work, and can we please, please, get rid of the deadwood as we do so — meaning any politician who’s just along for the ride and chunks of the central bureaucracy as well.
You can see why vast swathes of the establishment hate this idea and therefore hate Cummings.
What really worries them is that Cummings is also good at this. In an earlier role, he pushed through the introduction of charter schools as they would be called in the U.S. He pushed it through over the strenuous objections of the entire educational establishment. What’s really producing apoplexy is that the charter schools are, just as in the U.S., working in pulling up standards.
Cummings was also the organizational genius that pushed through Brexit as something that really was going to happen, again against the establishment consensus. Sure, it was my old boss Nigel Farage who produced the decades of pressure to have the referendum on the subject, but it was Cummings who won the campaign and then held governmental feet to the fire to make sure it happened.
Cummings is actually capable of changing the established order. That he does so in the direction I approve of is nice for me, but what infuriates the current order is his insistence and capability in changing it, to the detriment of the rich livings made out of the way things are.
If it hadn’t been this scandal for Cummings, then it would be something, anything, else. He has a distressing habit of not tucking his shirt in, that would have come up eventually. This lockdown stuff is the stick to beat him with, but it’s not the cause of the beating. The true cause is that Cummings has the temerity of having both the intention and the ability to change things.
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. You can read all his pieces at the Continental Telegraph.
