- Staff Notice
Dominic Cummings: The feared T-shirt technocrat who scorns the political class
The Downing Street ideas man relishes challenges, but voices contempt for civil servants and their ministerial masters
Skulking in the background of TV news footage of Boris Johnson’s cabinet of C-list politicos, a strange figure in a T-shirt could be seen. His name: Dominic Cummings, now the prime minister’s senior adviser. He’s all forehead and no smile, clutching a pen and possibly a notebook, and doubtless making notes.
What a pity, one thought, that David Davis wasn’t round the cabinet table. In 2017 Cummings noted that Davis was as “thick as mince”, as “lazy as a toad” and as “vain as Narcissus”. As they passed him in the corridor on Thursday, many of Johnson’s new appointees must have wondered how they will be summarised in that notebook. We’ll have to wait a bit to find out.
The Bismarck-obsessed Brexiter hates the civil service and called Cameron ‘a sphinx without a riddle’
David Cameron has given his strong backing to Michael Gove's views that more must be done to tackle extreme Islamist ideology before it spills into violence but suggested the education secretary's former aide Dominic Cummings is a "career psychopath".
Why Dominic Cummings at No 10 could spell trouble for Boris Johnson
The appointment of the former Vote Leave chief as a senior adviser has brought the anxieties of the hardest Brexiteers rushing to the surface.
Boris Johnson’s decision to appoint Dominic Cummings as his most senior adviser in Downing Street raises many questions about the sort of administration he intends to run, one of which is what sort of attitude it will take to the most hardline Brexiteers on the Tory backbenches
I don't know about anyone else, but I never heard of Cummings until four days ago, now he seems to be everywhere, or at least all the media are talking about him and that's for a very good reason. After Boris, he's the second most powerful man in Downing Street as Boris has appointed him as his chief advisror. Downsing Street staff already call him the CEO. It could even be argued that with Boris' known habitual laziness and lack of attention to details, Cummings will be the real power to take the UK out of the EU, but is that all he's got planned?
Cummings read history at Oxford and is driven by facts. He loves scientists and mathematicians and hates politicians and bureaucrats. Does he know what job he's got and who he's got to work with...?
To get to know him a little bit after reading some of the articles I've linked to, if you have the time read his blog article on the referendum which he wrote in 2017. He was the campaign director for the Vote Leave Campaign and it's very inciteful as to the kind of person he is. He's a prolific writer and he's the main link to his blog.
Basically, forget Brexit, that's small fry if Cummings has his way, he wants to revolutionise the way the country works and he is not just talking hot air either. Many of his arguments in his blog posts are fact based and very interesting, I only wish I had the time to read it all, but I've read a few of them and I'm in no doubt that if Boris does give him free reign, we are in for very interesting times and about time too after the disaster that was May's government.
Will Boris unleash this guy to tear down the civil service and all the bureaucracy that is attached to government and the State? I bloody hope so!
Edit: June 2020:
Here is a lecture that Cummings gave in 2014, outlining his plans for Whitehall reform: