The greatest missed opportunity (among SO MANY) of Boris Johnson’s time in No 10 is that Dominic Cummings was not able to achieve his goal of weeding out the Blairite obstructionists who infest the upper echelons of the Civil Service.
No. I would say that in addition to obstructionist civil servants and politicians, a pandemic that killed millions of people and shut down the world economy, which along with the war in Ukraine caused massive inflationary pressures, particularly in relation to energy, and disrupted supply lines that have still not fully recovered, might just have had a negative effect on our economic fortunes over the past three years,
It was not the pandemic that caused the problem, but the irrational official response to it, and the concerted suppression of all the rational voices dissenting from the insanity of the official “consensus”. It was “Remain” on steroids.
The responses to Covid-19 were not merely random errors because every single policy was systematically the reverse of the correct one.
The system is very difficult to fix, because our education system now rewards groupthink over creativity. The pool of high-flyers from whom to draw civil servant etc. is a concentration of out of touch savants in a delusional monoculture that believes it has “expertise”. Rare is the individual who can rise above a couple of decades of indoctrination with nonsense.
Can the ruling class acquire the humility to recognise its own incompetence and return some of its usurped power back to the people? Or will they conform to the unfortunate precedents of other decadent incompetent elites whose downfall is born of the social chaos they wrought in their desperate attempt to cling to power?
Yup, and Cummings – he who decried civil servants most loudly and wished they’d be replaced with data-using scientists – fell hard for epidemiological pseudo-science. This is a man who thinks he personally won Brexit because he hired a bunch of physicists but has proven he can’t tell the difference between something that sounds like science and something that is.
Indeed so. Eisegesis is no way to be scientific. You cannot start with a conclusion, that way lies twists and perversions of facts to ensure you arrive where you’ve decided you are going, regardless of evidence. A good Protestant exegetical approach is required.
Health and Social Care Committee and Science and Technology Committee
Oral evidence: Coronavirus: Lessons learnt, HC 95
Wednesday 26 May 2021Dominic Cummings: “there was a network of Bill Gates-type people who were saying ‘Completely re-think the whole paradigm of how you do this. Build in parallel’.” Gates among “the most competent people in the world”.
Cummings totally accepted and pushed the “pandemic”, lockdowns (for some), and warp speed rollout of untested, unsafe jabs using unproven mRNA technology.
So no thanks – I’ve no interest in what he has to say. https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/2249/html/
Cummings is politically clever but does not understand the most fundamental thing about science: Science is about mapping falsehood.
The moment you step into proving the “truth” of a theory, you are no longer doing science.
It is very easy for even clever people (and even trained scientists) to be misled by this crucial subtlety, especially when some of our theories can match experiments astonishingly closely. Useful as these theories are, we can’t say they are “true” in any absolute sense.
In the case of the epidemiological models at Imperial College, they were clearly garbage right from the start.
It is neither the task, nor the aim, of a scientific theory to provide or discover ‘the truth’. A good theory enables accurate predictions of what will happen, and yes, a good theory will ‘match experiments astonishingly closely’. This was well understood by an earlier generation of scientists – Hertz, Planck, Boltzmann, Bohr, Einstein, and most of the early 20thC giants in the field. Unfortunately modern scientists have moved away from that, perhaps as a result of the adulation by politicians and other ignorant people. Your epidemiological models are an example, and so are the climate models. Scientists don’t deal in truth, leave that to the statisticians who work with models, and note carefully the extent which their models accurately predict anything.
Fair enough. But just firing a few hundred trad civil servants and replacing them with private sector types will not be an improvement. It would just replace one set of problems with another. Out go ineffectual progressives; in come energetic and entrepreneurial influence peddlers i.e. Washington-on-Thames. As in the US much of the system would be hijacked by corporate interests. It would be inconsistent to deplore Pfizer et al over Covid in the US and then introduce the same enabling set up into the U.K. I think you need to propose an alternative system and not just a purge.
“But just firing a few hundred trad civil servants and replacing them with private sector types will not be an improvement…”
The system is very difficult to fix, because our education system now rewards groupthink over creativity. The pool of high-flyers from whom to draw civil servant etc. is a concentration of out of touch savants in a delusional monoculture that believes it has “expertise”. Rare is the individual who can rise above a couple of decades of indoctrination with nonsense.
I agree that it is difficult to fix – though not necessarily impossible – and how originality can be ground out by two decades of conforming. What I suspect, however, is that it is unlikely that transformation will be led from within. So far as I know, the three most impressive examples of Whitehall reform are the Esther/Haldane transformation of the Army and War Office 1905-14, the Next Steps / agencies program in the 1980s and Francis Maude’s reforms in the 2010s. All were driven by outsiders but then acquired internal allies. I accept, of course, that one should not hold one’s breath.
Also called “knowledge”.
I realize you guys aren’t too keen on that and prefer coming up with your own dumb ideas. You just keep that up and we’ll just keep ignoring you…
“Surely the purpose of ‘education’ has always been to encourage ‘groupthink’?”
Yes. However the scope of correct-think was much narrower when I was in school in the 1960s. My special subject (physics) was relatively free. However I could feel the change happening. As I progressed through my scientific training I could see the subtle way the domination of research funding by government grants started to direct the framing of questions.
Today we are approaching Lysenkoism as in the bad old days of the Soviet Union.
Correct. The present System (1992, present) represents a complete break with the way the UK was governed up to the 90s. The defining feature was the deliberate emasculation of the powers of national Parliament and Executive; we were now part of the New EU Empire and Blair made this adjustment to make us a more compliant EU Province. Hence the disaster of Devolution in Nations. Devolving powers to Quangos and bodies like Bank of England the Suprene Court, Euro Law and the NHS. Devolving powers to a new army of unelected permanent Regulators. The word is NMI. Why so few fail to recognise this bloodless Revolution is beyond me. The System is now run by the Progressives. Unelected permanent and rich. How to win back freedom from it is the story of our Times. Brexit was a rare kickback by the people but it left them untouched. They still rule.
We are on a slow path to a technocratic totalitarianism. Putting a tick on a ballot is not democracy; we are voting for something that is becoming more and more powerless in the real world. Mussolini formed a system of government that saw the state hand in hand with major corporations. He was going to call it ‘Corporatism’, but hey, that wasn’t catchy enough; Fascism had a much better ring to it. Replace ‘Corporatism’ with ‘Technocracy’, and there you have it.
Interesting. The Private Finance Initiative is associated with Blair’s New Labour, but was started by John Major in 1992. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_finance_initiative#History
WEF leader Klaus Schwab lauds Stakeholder Capitalism as a public-private partnership.
And at COP26 then Prince Charles underscored the “overwhelming responsibility to generations yet unborn” to mitigate climate change.
“We know this will take trillions, not billions, of dollars.”
The Prince of Wales says a “vast military-style campaign” is needed to ‘marshal the strength of the global private sector with trillions at its disposal’
Thoughtful comments, thanks. Thank goodness someone thinks the problems of the British state might go a little deeper than some “buffoons” or “lefty Blairite” civil servants or whatever provided by the usual ranters!
Dominic Cummings seems to believe in his own brilliance. Has he ever done anything to justify this? He always struck me as another self important, power hungry Westminster t**t.
I don’t think Cummings would survive in a true start-up, entrepreneurial environment. But in Westminster the one-eyed man thought he was a king amongst the blind. Unfortunately for him, they kept the lights off and knew their way around the room much better.
Unfortunately, the kinds of opportunities offered by Brexit, for a slimmed down state, tariff and obstruction free global trade and the like, would not appeal to those who actually voted for it. Brexit wasn’t that deep for most people: it was no to open borders and a protest vote against the “elite”.
Last edited 1 year ago by William Edward Henry Appleby
And in that you make an even more limited analysis of our problems than Roussinos argues Cummings does. Just the “Blairites”. Is that it?
This is exactly why the “Right” if such it is is losing so badly; it can’t agree on the diagnosis, resorts to name calling and in some cases daft conspiracy theories.
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
Had Cummings NOT panicked over COVID his credibility might have survived.
As it is, he did and it hasn’t.
And he still holds those hyper-authoritarian views till this day. Thus the hill he dies on.
Mark Goodhand
1 year ago
Good article.
I can’t agree with this bit, though:
“Cummings, probably correctly, assumes that a Labour government will be at best no more disastrous than the Conservatives”
The Conservatives, especially since Cameron, have been truly disastrous, but Labour will be much worse. They’ll do all the same wrong things, but enthusiastically. Whenever there’s a vote for something awful in the Commons (public health totalitarianism, Net Zero insanity, censorship, surveillance, reversal of Brexit) it gets full support from Labour but faces resistance from a few Conservative MPs.
Against the odds, Conservative rebels salvaged Brexit. If Labour had won in 2019, we’d be back in the EU by now.
A Labour majority will mean even more uncontrolled migration, faster descent into Chinese-style social credit fascism, and more radical efforts to undermine democracy.
I’m afraid I’m black pilled, along with Mr Hitchens. Nothing short of violence will turn the West around. Those of us who liked Britain as it was, and don’t fancy rioting, need to escape before it’s too late.
The question is, to where?
Blimey you’re good at predicting the future aren’t you? ‘Liked Britain as it was’ is a bit vague. Which period do you have in mind?
I liked the period when you didn’t have to have a rich mummy and daddy to get on the housing ladder, when it was possible to get council housing if you were on a low income, when there wasn’t an insane waiting list to get treatment on the NHS, when food banks weren’t as common as muck, when CEOs didn’t ‘earn’ an obscene multiple of their workers income, when rivers weren’t full of sh**t, when getting a degree didn’t mean taking on tens of thousands of pounds of debt, and so on. It’s of course the Labour party who have been in power for most of my 68 years so it’s them I should blame I suppose.
Conservatives have a lot to answer for, but most of our current troubles started with Blair.
Conservatives since 2010 have just continued what New Labour started.
I share a lot of your concerns, though I don’t think more government intervention is the answer.
The NHS is fundamentally dysfunctional, and throwing more money at it won’t help.
Before Blair, university was reserved for the truly academically able. In 1980, only 15% stayed in full-time education after the age of 18. It’s much easier to fully subsidise 15% than ~40%, or whatever we’re up to now.
OTOH, I’m fairly sure our rivers are cleaner now than they were throughout the 20th century, and the same goes for air quality (despite the absurd promotion of diesel).
As for the food banks, I suspect it’s a case of “if you build them, people will come”. Take a look around the poorest areas of our country and you won’t find many people who look like they’re short of calories.
I’ll grant that income and wealth inequality are a concern, though we should look for the root causes of that, rather than leaping straight to taxation and redistribution.
We’re seriousy considering going to a rock in the irish sea. Nice.people,.low.tax.and a.parliamentary system.organised to ensure nothing meaningful gets done. Whilst the financial benefits are attractive it’s the suffocation of freedoms of all sorts which will see us.go.
If you think Brexit has been delivered in any meaningful way you have very low expectations and possibly a very limited appreciation nof what could be done in the UK without the dead weight of excessive regulatioins, especially EU regs and attitudes.
Martin Butler
1 year ago
What I find bizarre about this article is that despite all the talk about reform, decline and new political parties, I don’t get the slightest sense of what kind of renewed Britain the author would like to see. Those on the right – which I gather is his political orientation – seem to be great at telling us that things need to change, and I agree on that, but apart from vague generalities no practical suggestions emerge. For example, why doesn’t he propose proportional representation? That would give new parties far more chance. Those on the left and right can at least agree that the sclerotic hold of the two big patties needs to be broken.
That’s a very good point about electoral reform. Whilst the argument in favour of FPTP was always that it enabled “strong, decisive government” this can now be increasingly seen as a fallacy, as all Western governments are engulfed within a wider, globalist agenda.
The question is: how might a more representative system come about, to turn the widespread sense of disenfranchisement around? As the writer quotes Cummings as saying, the forthcoming election promises to be hideous; in its impotence and the glaring hollowness of its posturing.
I have thought a lot about this, and I’ve decided that I would like to see our upper chamber radically rethought…
The US has 100 seats in the Senate, representing about 330 million people across 50 states.
We have nearly 800 people in our House of Lords, and it appears to operate more like a retirement village for political cronies and donors, rather than a serious chamber scrutinising the output of the legislature on behalf of the citizenry.
I would propose that we abolish the HoL and replace it with an upper chamber of no more than 100 seats, elected on the basis of proportional representation.
I think this could be a good balance, against the FPTP-elected Commons. It would be a lot less expensive, and hopefully more productive. It would mean we have a lower chamber elected by FPTP, which would allow us to avoid the kind of messy coalition stuff that European nations regularly struggle with …but then that upper chamber would be scrutinising the output of the Commons, and if it was elected via PR it should reflect a plurality of views, without impeding basic governance.
I would add, another practical suggestion would be to halve the number of Commons seats, and double the pay.
I know it’s deeply unpopular to suggest we pay politicians more money, given the cretinous lot we are governed by currently, but the wages are objectively far too low to attract top talent. All we get is the dullards, the activists, and the silver-spoon types — the ones unqualified for any real jobs.
That’s not a good situation.
We need MPs that have varied life and business experience. I think the era of ‘professional politicians’ demonstrates the folly of the whole idea. The American Founders were men of business and trades. Britain’s politicians were often gentry, with men of business or skill mixed in.
The whole idea of having a professional political class (of people who’ve never done anything except work in politics, civil service, QUANGOs and charities etc) is actually quite a new idea, but the resulting governance has been abysmal, in my opinion.
They are ideas worth looking into. I just can’t see over 1,100 MPs and Lords voting themselves out of a very very cushy job and pension.
Plus the loss in revenue into party coffers via their influence.
A great sentiment (well bar the pay idea). But all too late. This Parliament has been flirting with the abolition of second jobs – but not nurses doctors or anyone in the State sector of course. No. They want to purge Parliament of those in a grubby Diskrimator wealth creating private sector the Ruling Clerisy of Illiberal Progressives (Lib Dem Labour Lords & plenty of Wet Fake Tories) are pathologically opposed too. A range all qualify all life experience – long gone. We live in the Age of the Professional Politicians. And god how it shows.
I think that’s an idea that would gather a lot of popular support.
Another variation would be to retain FPTP at Westminster (for the time being) but change local council elections to PR. It’s almost comical watching the small-minded political posturing of local councillors, whose job it is to make sure the bins get emptied and the street cleaned whilst being responsive to local issues affecting their electorate. That would give people a taster of the possibilities for extending PR as far as the national level.
The fudges witnessed elsewhere don’t seem quite as restrictive to good governance now we’ve had a period where so many people perceive UK government as failing the population. It might also have the advantage of dampening down the rabid divisions the MSM seek to exploit for headlines, which has had such a negative impact on the level of political debate.
Great that you remember Paul. Cummings has surprisingly been spared a lot compared to Hancock when both men have had arguably equal blame(more than even Boris) on pushing lockdowns & masks onto England if not the entire UK in both March-April & October 2020. In fact he was one of the biggest reasons why the UK derailed itself from the Swedish approach. I still haven’t forgiven him for that, and despise him as much as Hancock and the lot at SAGE(and Indy SAGE).
Katharine Eyre
1 year ago
Every time I think of the current political establishment in the UK, a line from Roald Dahl’s Matilda springs to mind. Matilda’s parents dislike her to such an extent that they think of her as a scab: something which you put up with “until you can pick it off and flick it away”.
I think the British feel the same way about Westminster and its malcontents.
Our particular electoral system doesn’t reward third political parties. I’ve believed that all my adult life however the success of Nigel Farage and his ad-hoc UKIP party somewhat dented my belief. What he succeeded in doing was to get his political objective without winning power. He essentially used the media and the resulting public pressure to move one of the mainstream parties closer to his views. It nearly split the Conservative party with defections from both the parliamentary party and membership. A similar movement is possible on other issues but it would require someone as strong willed an driven as Mr Farage. I’m not sure Mr Cummings fits the bill.
I think it can be done, but as you highlight, it requires a force of personality (like a Mr Farage, or a Mr Trump in the USA).
Surveying the UK political landscape I can’t yet see anyone with that kind of personality yet. :/
This country is crying out for leadership, and there just seems to be a total dearth of rising talent. I think, in part, we’ve made the political and media environment so horribly vicious and high-stakes, that frankly anyone with brains and talent would view it as not worth the trouble. Why jump into a vipers nest, for crap pay and potentially a destroyed reputation if the press decide to cancel you for a joke you told 20 years ago, etc.
Having said that, I suppose the USA is largely the same re the political environment, yet they do have some really interesting candidates running currently — RFK offering real difference in his platform, from the left… and people like Vivek Ramaswamy, full of energy and ideas on the right.
I hope we will see some new faces throw their hats in the ring here, we sorely need it.
“RFK offering real difference in his platform, from the left… and people like Vivek Ramaswamy, full of energy and ideas on the right”
Looks like we have big conspiracy theory fan here!
Racist Grandpa! Had a couple of drinks this evening, old boy?
AC Harper
1 year ago
As long as you select the next iteration of politicians from the swamp dwellers the swamp will always be with us. It would be populist to campaign on ‘draining the swamp’ and we have already seen how well that works elsewhere.
You can argue that Brexit was a counter-swamp affair. It took decades of endeavour (and some inadvertent help from the EU) to come to fruition. It is still trying to wade out of the swamp. Perhaps Cummings-led reform is possible but that too might take decades of endeavour. The sooner it starts the better.
Robbie K
1 year ago
My initial reaction to Cummings’ proposal was one of cynicism. Yet, the political landscape in the UK is a wasteland, with all the major parties lacking identity and ideology. I’m uncertain how anyone can get excited or energised by their policy and direction.
Perhaps as we get closer to the general election some patterns might emerge, but right now, I cannot support anyone.
So, go for it Dom, just maybe it will shake things up.
j watson
1 year ago
Has anyone heard Cummings, or for that matter the Author here, describe what and how they’d reform/change SW1, the ‘political system’ or whatever it is they are raging against such that’d it would make the slightest difference to ordinary folk?
I do fear much of this is ’emperor’s got no clothes’ and the less specific they can be the more others can project onto them a series of gripes with no actual thought through solution. We are in the ‘Age of the Grift’ and is this yet more of the same?
Fundamentally I think Mr Barnard Castle failed to ever say much about what radically he’d do about the UK’s economic model. Does he favour switching more taxation to wealth rather than income (i.e incentivise investment and graft)? Does he favour fundamental changes in how employers are incentivised/made to drive productivity and wean themselves off cheap labour? Long list of course, on which he’s always seemed silent and more interested in cobblering Civil servants. It’s just a straw man approach I fear.
An interesting discourse but this …
“it is hard for its supporters not to intuit, already, that it was a Pyrrhic victory on a minor front of what will be a long and gruelling war of attrition. Like Trump’s election, rather than overturn a collapsing system, it allowed the system to consolidate itself in a more ruthless and vigorous form” ……assumes that this was EVER the intent of the Brexit Project. I’m pretty certain it wasn’t. Let’s remember, when it was conceived, to silence the anti-EU arm of the Conservative Party by achieving a resounding mandate to remain in the EU, Brexit wasn’t even a word. Much like anyone assuming Trump’s intent was EVER to Drain The Swamp or even Make America Great Again. Come on, now.
Last edited 1 year ago by Laura Pritchard
James Kirk
1 year ago
Has he offered his services to Tice? Rejected? Reform have a good reasonable manifesto but no one votes for it. No, he’s no figurehead. Voters like a head of hair and familiarity with an ironing board. They remember his trip up north and his BS about eyetests. He came over as an arrogant SOB. UK needs a Head Boy, not a School Bully. Why Alistair Campbell could never be an MP.
Walter Marvell
1 year ago
Huh? I agreed with much of this dissection of the failed Leftist State. But it is Cumming’s first mission to destroy IT that warrants support, not the destruction of the hapless Tories, the only viable resistance The first mission was and still must be the overthrow of the EU/Blairite New Model State/Order constructed in the 1990s. It is permanent and unelected and led to the anti democratic EU style rule by Diktat and the growth of Quangocratic Monster Blob. Rishi did more today to batter these charlatans – this arrogant useless Let Em Eat Cake power clique – than DC ever did after the achievement of Brexit. Rishi and HIS useless Tories are- alas – all that stands between us and a limp Labour Party who will happily entrench the powers of the Big Daddy State beyond the point of return, making us yet more Soviet and economically and socially crippled. DC was a mad Robespierre who screwed up terribly on lockdown – reinforcing socialism and the sickly progressive entitlement culture – and then tunneled away like a mad rat on acid into utter irrelevance with his deranged petty party spat with the Fool and his Lady Ping Pong Whatever. This article gets so much right about the horrors of the Progressive New Order system. But only the very useless Tories – the non wet non uniparty types like Rishi – can stop its cancerous spread beyond 2025, not the burnt out comet DC. Today was a tiny first and long overdue pushback.
Brilliant précis, if I may say so, although not sure if Rishi is that much less useless than the rest of his party. Opportunism and necessity may help in one or two areas, but I wouldn’t have much faith in this getting us very far.
I disagree. Thge Tories are not going to be a part of the solution. They are a big part of the problem. Partly because so many of them actually support the same sorts of policies as the left but also and seriously because they act as an anger sink which tricks their members, supporters and voters into thinking they might actually follow policies the people want.
As they did on the EU so with all the other problems noted above, they kept their members and supporters quiet while quietly signing up fopr every EU measure put before them.
As I recall we have had Conservative Party PMs since 2010. Inn those years they have advanced the cause of authoritarian leftism not least by appointing leftists to key roles in the bureaucracy and quangos but never ever a freedom loving libertarian in a usefull role – never.
Tyler Durden
1 year ago
All Cummings represents is an attack on political representation. Those years ago, he simply wanted to bypass the parliamentary Conservative Party and lead a recentred bureaucracy focused on a radical reform programme. Some of his ideas may be considerably more intelligent than Richard Tice’s replacement of N Farage’s EU referendum party but he has no current way to communicate them to a mass, populist audience.
Vern Hughes
1 year ago
This really is pretentious rubbish. Either Britain needs a political instrument to demolish Westminster and rebuild a working democracy, or it doesn’t. If it does, get on and do it – a party of the mainstream Somewheres, anti-Woke and anti-Thatcher, can not be that hard to create. Most people know it has to be done, so get serious and down to work. Roussinos, though, never helps us with the task at hand. There are always too many reasons why nothing can be done. It remains infinitely easier to describe the problem than to create a solution. Occasionally, with Roussinos, there is a sense that he perhaps does know what he’s talking about, but by the time you reach the end of a Roussinos piece, the doubt passes and you can be quite confident that he is just a wanker after-all.
This problem is now UnHerd’s problem. At some point, doesn’t it become important to actually do something? To change a decrepid polity instead of documenting every instance of its decay?
Last edited 1 year ago by Vern Hughes
Noel Chiappa
1 year ago
The root of the problem with today’s Western democracies is the voters; they’re moronic children. With such voters, anything that looks like democracy is fundamentally non-workable. There’s a reason the Romans replaced democracy with an Emperor.
Prashant Kotak
1 year ago
Interesting piece, thank you.
Mark Melvin
1 year ago
Opeds like this are the reason I subscribe to Unherd so first of all thanks very much Aris. I find it sickening to have to admit to thinking Cummins is right about quite a lot and had a real chance with BJ to absolutely move things in a better direction. Any direction even. But they blew it. Cummins (like BJ) to me has zero credibility (even though he is likely right about some things) but his schoolyard excuse of why he took that drive from London to Barnard Castle during lockdown sticks in the gullet. Caught bang to rights and being shown as a total hypocrite and then trying to sleaze his way out of it with an excuse my 4-year old might have come up with… words fail me. However I do think he is right about lots of things.
Regarding reforming the useless House of Lords, I do think it useful to not have an elected other chamber. I cannot imagine anything worse about having to have elections about something else. If there are 800 HOL members, why not assign voting rights on a random basis to 100 each year and leave it at that. Change up each year so all HOL members get a chance. May make the whole process more manageable and get over the stupidity of the periodic politically driven honours lists.
Regarding career politicians which is what we have now, why not take a leaf out of another successful civilisation; the Romans. They had a minimum age requirement of 40 for holding public office. Feels about right to me. Not saying the quality was any better but the people would have had to have actually done something in life by then.
Not planning to hold my breath on anything though.
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
x
Last edited 1 year ago by UnHerd Reader
Elvis Quinn
1 year ago
Does anyone know what this guy, Dominic Cummings, actually wants to accomplish? Because I’ve been baffled since day one.
He wants to make the machinery of government more democratically responsive, functionally agile and forward looking. He considers substantive policy programmes to be secondary to those goals.
That doesn’t explain anything.. but I’m guessing that was your point.
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
Arrogance on stilts:
“ … these people, our establishment, are manifestly incompetent, credulous, of middling intellectual capacity at their very best — he didn’t even try to disguise his contempt for them while he was working with them, as Laura Kuenssberg’s new documentary series shows — and yet they beat him.”
No, they did not beat him – Cummings is a weirdo, and beat himself by hitching his wagon to a chimaerical project like Brexit.
When you’ve run out of scapegoats, perhaps you might someday accept that Brexit was a farce from start to finish, cheered on by daydreamers (such as the writer), fomented by cynics (Johnson, Farage) and ridden over a cliff by dunderheads (Davis, Frostie, Trussed-up)
I so enjoy these lachrymose Brexiters, and their long after-life of self-pity and furious, scatter-gun blaming.
With success like yours, nobody needs failure, mate
Champagne Socialist
1 year ago
How are Dom’s eyes these days? Still driving up and down the countryside to make sure he can see?!?!?
The greatest missed opportunity (among SO MANY) of Boris Johnson’s time in No 10 is that Dominic Cummings was not able to achieve his goal of weeding out the Blairite obstructionists who infest the upper echelons of the Civil Service.
What did you expect from a bunch of incompetent buffoons?
What’s you suggestion boy? Or don’t you have one?
“Your suggestion, boy?”
You’re welcome, Racist Grandpa!
Do you have anything to offer, apart from exchanging insults?
Paid troll says what?
He’s not a paid troll, he’s just a troll. Y’all need to stop feeding him.
Ditto my comments above! “Incompetent buffoons”?! Is that your analysis of the British state’s dysfunction?
And they were the only obstruction to the sunlit uplands of a Johnsonian Brexit nirvana. Yes of course.
No. I would say that in addition to obstructionist civil servants and politicians, a pandemic that killed millions of people and shut down the world economy, which along with the war in Ukraine caused massive inflationary pressures, particularly in relation to energy, and disrupted supply lines that have still not fully recovered, might just have had a negative effect on our economic fortunes over the past three years,
Yes, no doubt without all that Johnson’s serious-minded, conscientious approach to politics would have been able to work its magic.
It was not the pandemic that caused the problem, but the irrational official response to it, and the concerted suppression of all the rational voices dissenting from the insanity of the official “consensus”. It was “Remain” on steroids.
The responses to Covid-19 were not merely random errors because every single policy was systematically the reverse of the correct one.
The system is very difficult to fix, because our education system now rewards groupthink over creativity. The pool of high-flyers from whom to draw civil servant etc. is a concentration of out of touch savants in a delusional monoculture that believes it has “expertise”. Rare is the individual who can rise above a couple of decades of indoctrination with nonsense.
Can the ruling class acquire the humility to recognise its own incompetence and return some of its usurped power back to the people? Or will they conform to the unfortunate precedents of other decadent incompetent elites whose downfall is born of the social chaos they wrought in their desperate attempt to cling to power?
As to the question posed in your final paragraph, if one assumes human nature to be mostly fixed, then the latter outcome is far more likely.
Yup, and Cummings – he who decried civil servants most loudly and wished they’d be replaced with data-using scientists – fell hard for epidemiological pseudo-science. This is a man who thinks he personally won Brexit because he hired a bunch of physicists but has proven he can’t tell the difference between something that sounds like science and something that is.
Indeed so. Eisegesis is no way to be scientific. You cannot start with a conclusion, that way lies twists and perversions of facts to ensure you arrive where you’ve decided you are going, regardless of evidence. A good Protestant exegetical approach is required.
Health and Social Care Committee and Science and Technology Committee
Oral evidence: Coronavirus: Lessons learnt, HC 95
Wednesday 26 May 2021Dominic Cummings: “there was a network of Bill Gates-type people who were saying ‘Completely re-think the whole paradigm of how you do this. Build in parallel’.” Gates among “the most competent people in the world”.
Cummings totally accepted and pushed the “pandemic”, lockdowns (for some), and warp speed rollout of untested, unsafe jabs using unproven mRNA technology.
So no thanks – I’ve no interest in what he has to say.
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/2249/html/
Cummings is politically clever but does not understand the most fundamental thing about science: Science is about mapping falsehood.
The moment you step into proving the “truth” of a theory, you are no longer doing science.
It is very easy for even clever people (and even trained scientists) to be misled by this crucial subtlety, especially when some of our theories can match experiments astonishingly closely. Useful as these theories are, we can’t say they are “true” in any absolute sense.
In the case of the epidemiological models at Imperial College, they were clearly garbage right from the start.
It is neither the task, nor the aim, of a scientific theory to provide or discover ‘the truth’. A good theory enables accurate predictions of what will happen, and yes, a good theory will ‘match experiments astonishingly closely’. This was well understood by an earlier generation of scientists – Hertz, Planck, Boltzmann, Bohr, Einstein, and most of the early 20thC giants in the field. Unfortunately modern scientists have moved away from that, perhaps as a result of the adulation by politicians and other ignorant people. Your epidemiological models are an example, and so are the climate models. Scientists don’t deal in truth, leave that to the statisticians who work with models, and note carefully the extent which their models accurately predict anything.
Fair enough. But just firing a few hundred trad civil servants and replacing them with private sector types will not be an improvement. It would just replace one set of problems with another. Out go ineffectual progressives; in come energetic and entrepreneurial influence peddlers i.e. Washington-on-Thames. As in the US much of the system would be hijacked by corporate interests. It would be inconsistent to deplore Pfizer et al over Covid in the US and then introduce the same enabling set up into the U.K. I think you need to propose an alternative system and not just a purge.
“But just firing a few hundred trad civil servants and replacing them with private sector types will not be an improvement…”
The system is very difficult to fix, because our education system now rewards groupthink over creativity. The pool of high-flyers from whom to draw civil servant etc. is a concentration of out of touch savants in a delusional monoculture that believes it has “expertise”. Rare is the individual who can rise above a couple of decades of indoctrination with nonsense.
I agree that it is difficult to fix – though not necessarily impossible – and how originality can be ground out by two decades of conforming. What I suspect, however, is that it is unlikely that transformation will be led from within. So far as I know, the three most impressive examples of Whitehall reform are the Esther/Haldane transformation of the Army and War Office 1905-14, the Next Steps / agencies program in the 1980s and Francis Maude’s reforms in the 2010s. All were driven by outsiders but then acquired internal allies. I accept, of course, that one should not hold one’s breath.
“Rare is the individual who can rise above a couple of decades of indoctrination with nonsense.”
No doubt you are such an individual?!?! LOL!
Petty
Surely the purpose of ‘education’ has always been to encourage ‘groupthink’?
Also called “knowledge”.
I realize you guys aren’t too keen on that and prefer coming up with your own dumb ideas. You just keep that up and we’ll just keep ignoring you…
Sad
“Surely the purpose of ‘education’ has always been to encourage ‘groupthink’?”
Yes. However the scope of correct-think was much narrower when I was in school in the 1960s. My special subject (physics) was relatively free. However I could feel the change happening. As I progressed through my scientific training I could see the subtle way the domination of research funding by government grants started to direct the framing of questions.
Today we are approaching Lysenkoism as in the bad old days of the Soviet Union.
Correct. The present System (1992, present) represents a complete break with the way the UK was governed up to the 90s. The defining feature was the deliberate emasculation of the powers of national Parliament and Executive; we were now part of the New EU Empire and Blair made this adjustment to make us a more compliant EU Province. Hence the disaster of Devolution in Nations. Devolving powers to Quangos and bodies like Bank of England the Suprene Court, Euro Law and the NHS. Devolving powers to a new army of unelected permanent Regulators. The word is NMI. Why so few fail to recognise this bloodless Revolution is beyond me. The System is now run by the Progressives. Unelected permanent and rich. How to win back freedom from it is the story of our Times. Brexit was a rare kickback by the people but it left them untouched. They still rule.
We are on a slow path to a technocratic totalitarianism. Putting a tick on a ballot is not democracy; we are voting for something that is becoming more and more powerless in the real world. Mussolini formed a system of government that saw the state hand in hand with major corporations. He was going to call it ‘Corporatism’, but hey, that wasn’t catchy enough; Fascism had a much better ring to it. Replace ‘Corporatism’ with ‘Technocracy’, and there you have it.
“”technocratic totalitarianism …”
Excellent concept – so true!
Interesting. The Private Finance Initiative is associated with Blair’s New Labour, but was started by John Major in 1992.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_finance_initiative#History
WEF leader Klaus Schwab lauds Stakeholder Capitalism as a public-private partnership.
And at COP26 then Prince Charles underscored the “overwhelming responsibility to generations yet unborn” to mitigate climate change.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/579457-prince-charles-calls-for-warlike-effort-to-fight-climate-change/
Thoughtful comments, thanks. Thank goodness someone thinks the problems of the British state might go a little deeper than some “buffoons” or “lefty Blairite” civil servants or whatever provided by the usual ranters!
Dominic Cummings seems to believe in his own brilliance. Has he ever done anything to justify this? He always struck me as another self important, power hungry Westminster t**t.
I don’t think Cummings would survive in a true start-up, entrepreneurial environment. But in Westminster the one-eyed man thought he was a king amongst the blind. Unfortunately for him, they kept the lights off and knew their way around the room much better.
That’s rather good. Your own?
Thanks, and yes it is.
Unfortunately, the kinds of opportunities offered by Brexit, for a slimmed down state, tariff and obstruction free global trade and the like, would not appeal to those who actually voted for it. Brexit wasn’t that deep for most people: it was no to open borders and a protest vote against the “elite”.
Blairite obstructionists? Like Fataturk himself?
And in that you make an even more limited analysis of our problems than Roussinos argues Cummings does. Just the “Blairites”. Is that it?
This is exactly why the “Right” if such it is is losing so badly; it can’t agree on the diagnosis, resorts to name calling and in some cases daft conspiracy theories.
Had Cummings NOT panicked over COVID his credibility might have survived.
As it is, he did and it hasn’t.
Correct.
Sadly, it wasn’t a fluke. Cummings is a technocrat at heart, he just wants to be the one at the controls.
If you read his blog you realise that, for Cummings, to be called a “technocrat” is a compliment.
And he still holds those hyper-authoritarian views till this day. Thus the hill he dies on.
Good article.
I can’t agree with this bit, though:
The Conservatives, especially since Cameron, have been truly disastrous, but Labour will be much worse. They’ll do all the same wrong things, but enthusiastically. Whenever there’s a vote for something awful in the Commons (public health totalitarianism, Net Zero insanity, censorship, surveillance, reversal of Brexit) it gets full support from Labour but faces resistance from a few Conservative MPs.
Against the odds, Conservative rebels salvaged Brexit. If Labour had won in 2019, we’d be back in the EU by now.
A Labour majority will mean even more uncontrolled migration, faster descent into Chinese-style social credit fascism, and more radical efforts to undermine democracy.
I’m afraid I’m black pilled, along with Mr Hitchens. Nothing short of violence will turn the West around. Those of us who liked Britain as it was, and don’t fancy rioting, need to escape before it’s too late.
The question is, to where?
Blimey you’re good at predicting the future aren’t you? ‘Liked Britain as it was’ is a bit vague. Which period do you have in mind?
I liked the period when you didn’t have to have a rich mummy and daddy to get on the housing ladder, when it was possible to get council housing if you were on a low income, when there wasn’t an insane waiting list to get treatment on the NHS, when food banks weren’t as common as muck, when CEOs didn’t ‘earn’ an obscene multiple of their workers income, when rivers weren’t full of sh**t, when getting a degree didn’t mean taking on tens of thousands of pounds of debt, and so on. It’s of course the Labour party who have been in power for most of my 68 years so it’s them I should blame I suppose.
Labour 23, Cons 43 years since the 50s.
Conservatives have a lot to answer for, but most of our current troubles started with Blair.
Conservatives since 2010 have just continued what New Labour started.
Absolutely right.
Blair was Thatcher’s political birth-child. Our woes started with Thatcher-Reaganism
My personal favourite years were 2001 to 2005 – good levels of technology and prosperity, before New Labour did most of their damage.
No but New Labour can take a fair bit of credit for it.
I share a lot of your concerns, though I don’t think more government intervention is the answer.
The NHS is fundamentally dysfunctional, and throwing more money at it won’t help.
Before Blair, university was reserved for the truly academically able. In 1980, only 15% stayed in full-time education after the age of 18. It’s much easier to fully subsidise 15% than ~40%, or whatever we’re up to now.
OTOH, I’m fairly sure our rivers are cleaner now than they were throughout the 20th century, and the same goes for air quality (despite the absurd promotion of diesel).
As for the food banks, I suspect it’s a case of “if you build them, people will come”. Take a look around the poorest areas of our country and you won’t find many people who look like they’re short of calories.
I’ll grant that income and wealth inequality are a concern, though we should look for the root causes of that, rather than leaping straight to taxation and redistribution.
We’re seriousy considering going to a rock in the irish sea. Nice.people,.low.tax.and a.parliamentary system.organised to ensure nothing meaningful gets done. Whilst the financial benefits are attractive it’s the suffocation of freedoms of all sorts which will see us.go.
If you think Brexit has been delivered in any meaningful way you have very low expectations and possibly a very limited appreciation nof what could be done in the UK without the dead weight of excessive regulatioins, especially EU regs and attitudes.
What I find bizarre about this article is that despite all the talk about reform, decline and new political parties, I don’t get the slightest sense of what kind of renewed Britain the author would like to see. Those on the right – which I gather is his political orientation – seem to be great at telling us that things need to change, and I agree on that, but apart from vague generalities no practical suggestions emerge. For example, why doesn’t he propose proportional representation? That would give new parties far more chance. Those on the left and right can at least agree that the sclerotic hold of the two big patties needs to be broken.
That’s a very good point about electoral reform. Whilst the argument in favour of FPTP was always that it enabled “strong, decisive government” this can now be increasingly seen as a fallacy, as all Western governments are engulfed within a wider, globalist agenda.
The question is: how might a more representative system come about, to turn the widespread sense of disenfranchisement around? As the writer quotes Cummings as saying, the forthcoming election promises to be hideous; in its impotence and the glaring hollowness of its posturing.
I have thought a lot about this, and I’ve decided that I would like to see our upper chamber radically rethought…
The US has 100 seats in the Senate, representing about 330 million people across 50 states.
We have nearly 800 people in our House of Lords, and it appears to operate more like a retirement village for political cronies and donors, rather than a serious chamber scrutinising the output of the legislature on behalf of the citizenry.
I would propose that we abolish the HoL and replace it with an upper chamber of no more than 100 seats, elected on the basis of proportional representation.
I think this could be a good balance, against the FPTP-elected Commons. It would be a lot less expensive, and hopefully more productive. It would mean we have a lower chamber elected by FPTP, which would allow us to avoid the kind of messy coalition stuff that European nations regularly struggle with …but then that upper chamber would be scrutinising the output of the Commons, and if it was elected via PR it should reflect a plurality of views, without impeding basic governance.
What do you think?
I would add, another practical suggestion would be to halve the number of Commons seats, and double the pay.
I know it’s deeply unpopular to suggest we pay politicians more money, given the cretinous lot we are governed by currently, but the wages are objectively far too low to attract top talent. All we get is the dullards, the activists, and the silver-spoon types — the ones unqualified for any real jobs.
That’s not a good situation.
We need MPs that have varied life and business experience. I think the era of ‘professional politicians’ demonstrates the folly of the whole idea. The American Founders were men of business and trades. Britain’s politicians were often gentry, with men of business or skill mixed in.
The whole idea of having a professional political class (of people who’ve never done anything except work in politics, civil service, QUANGOs and charities etc) is actually quite a new idea, but the resulting governance has been abysmal, in my opinion.
I like both ideas. Sadly such reforms are way beyond the competence of the current crop.
They are ideas worth looking into. I just can’t see over 1,100 MPs and Lords voting themselves out of a very very cushy job and pension.
Plus the loss in revenue into party coffers via their influence.
A great sentiment (well bar the pay idea). But all too late. This Parliament has been flirting with the abolition of second jobs – but not nurses doctors or anyone in the State sector of course. No. They want to purge Parliament of those in a grubby Diskrimator wealth creating private sector the Ruling Clerisy of Illiberal Progressives (Lib Dem Labour Lords & plenty of Wet Fake Tories) are pathologically opposed too. A range all qualify all life experience – long gone. We live in the Age of the Professional Politicians. And god how it shows.
I think that’s an idea that would gather a lot of popular support.
Another variation would be to retain FPTP at Westminster (for the time being) but change local council elections to PR. It’s almost comical watching the small-minded political posturing of local councillors, whose job it is to make sure the bins get emptied and the street cleaned whilst being responsive to local issues affecting their electorate. That would give people a taster of the possibilities for extending PR as far as the national level.
The fudges witnessed elsewhere don’t seem quite as restrictive to good governance now we’ve had a period where so many people perceive UK government as failing the population. It might also have the advantage of dampening down the rabid divisions the MSM seek to exploit for headlines, which has had such a negative impact on the level of political debate.
Very good point Steve.
All they had was Big Dog and the guy who liked maniacally rubbing his hands together.
Not a great menu.
Cummings’ attitude to lockdowns, alone, disqualifies him from ever again being anywhere near power.
Please apply that logic to the current top of the polls Starmer.
Agreed. Both of them(plus many others) have no place near power.
Great that you remember Paul. Cummings has surprisingly been spared a lot compared to Hancock when both men have had arguably equal blame(more than even Boris) on pushing lockdowns & masks onto England if not the entire UK in both March-April & October 2020. In fact he was one of the biggest reasons why the UK derailed itself from the Swedish approach. I still haven’t forgiven him for that, and despise him as much as Hancock and the lot at SAGE(and Indy SAGE).
Every time I think of the current political establishment in the UK, a line from Roald Dahl’s Matilda springs to mind. Matilda’s parents dislike her to such an extent that they think of her as a scab: something which you put up with “until you can pick it off and flick it away”.
I think the British feel the same way about Westminster and its malcontents.
And the feeling is mutual.
Our particular electoral system doesn’t reward third political parties. I’ve believed that all my adult life however the success of Nigel Farage and his ad-hoc UKIP party somewhat dented my belief. What he succeeded in doing was to get his political objective without winning power. He essentially used the media and the resulting public pressure to move one of the mainstream parties closer to his views. It nearly split the Conservative party with defections from both the parliamentary party and membership. A similar movement is possible on other issues but it would require someone as strong willed an driven as Mr Farage. I’m not sure Mr Cummings fits the bill.
I think it can be done, but as you highlight, it requires a force of personality (like a Mr Farage, or a Mr Trump in the USA).
Surveying the UK political landscape I can’t yet see anyone with that kind of personality yet. :/
This country is crying out for leadership, and there just seems to be a total dearth of rising talent. I think, in part, we’ve made the political and media environment so horribly vicious and high-stakes, that frankly anyone with brains and talent would view it as not worth the trouble. Why jump into a vipers nest, for crap pay and potentially a destroyed reputation if the press decide to cancel you for a joke you told 20 years ago, etc.
Having said that, I suppose the USA is largely the same re the political environment, yet they do have some really interesting candidates running currently — RFK offering real difference in his platform, from the left… and people like Vivek Ramaswamy, full of energy and ideas on the right.
I hope we will see some new faces throw their hats in the ring here, we sorely need it.
“RFK offering real difference in his platform, from the left… and people like Vivek Ramaswamy, full of energy and ideas on the right”
Looks like we have big conspiracy theory fan here!
Time for bed boy!
Off you go now.
Racist Grandpa! Had a couple of drinks this evening, old boy?
As long as you select the next iteration of politicians from the swamp dwellers the swamp will always be with us. It would be populist to campaign on ‘draining the swamp’ and we have already seen how well that works elsewhere.
You can argue that Brexit was a counter-swamp affair. It took decades of endeavour (and some inadvertent help from the EU) to come to fruition. It is still trying to wade out of the swamp. Perhaps Cummings-led reform is possible but that too might take decades of endeavour. The sooner it starts the better.
My initial reaction to Cummings’ proposal was one of cynicism. Yet, the political landscape in the UK is a wasteland, with all the major parties lacking identity and ideology. I’m uncertain how anyone can get excited or energised by their policy and direction.
Perhaps as we get closer to the general election some patterns might emerge, but right now, I cannot support anyone.
So, go for it Dom, just maybe it will shake things up.
Has anyone heard Cummings, or for that matter the Author here, describe what and how they’d reform/change SW1, the ‘political system’ or whatever it is they are raging against such that’d it would make the slightest difference to ordinary folk?
I do fear much of this is ’emperor’s got no clothes’ and the less specific they can be the more others can project onto them a series of gripes with no actual thought through solution. We are in the ‘Age of the Grift’ and is this yet more of the same?
Fundamentally I think Mr Barnard Castle failed to ever say much about what radically he’d do about the UK’s economic model. Does he favour switching more taxation to wealth rather than income (i.e incentivise investment and graft)? Does he favour fundamental changes in how employers are incentivised/made to drive productivity and wean themselves off cheap labour? Long list of course, on which he’s always seemed silent and more interested in cobblering Civil servants. It’s just a straw man approach I fear.
Populism is just so much fantasy football, with steroids, and good enough PR to make people buy it, even though they’ve yet to see the promised game.
Indeed DA, and Cummings an arch proponent.
An interesting discourse but this …
“it is hard for its supporters not to intuit, already, that it was a Pyrrhic victory on a minor front of what will be a long and gruelling war of attrition. Like Trump’s election, rather than overturn a collapsing system, it allowed the system to consolidate itself in a more ruthless and vigorous form” ……assumes that this was EVER the intent of the Brexit Project. I’m pretty certain it wasn’t. Let’s remember, when it was conceived, to silence the anti-EU arm of the Conservative Party by achieving a resounding mandate to remain in the EU, Brexit wasn’t even a word. Much like anyone assuming Trump’s intent was EVER to Drain The Swamp or even Make America Great Again. Come on, now.
Has he offered his services to Tice? Rejected? Reform have a good reasonable manifesto but no one votes for it. No, he’s no figurehead. Voters like a head of hair and familiarity with an ironing board. They remember his trip up north and his BS about eyetests. He came over as an arrogant SOB. UK needs a Head Boy, not a School Bully. Why Alistair Campbell could never be an MP.
Huh? I agreed with much of this dissection of the failed Leftist State. But it is Cumming’s first mission to destroy IT that warrants support, not the destruction of the hapless Tories, the only viable resistance The first mission was and still must be the overthrow of the EU/Blairite New Model State/Order constructed in the 1990s. It is permanent and unelected and led to the anti democratic EU style rule by Diktat and the growth of Quangocratic Monster Blob. Rishi did more today to batter these charlatans – this arrogant useless Let Em Eat Cake power clique – than DC ever did after the achievement of Brexit. Rishi and HIS useless Tories are- alas – all that stands between us and a limp Labour Party who will happily entrench the powers of the Big Daddy State beyond the point of return, making us yet more Soviet and economically and socially crippled. DC was a mad Robespierre who screwed up terribly on lockdown – reinforcing socialism and the sickly progressive entitlement culture – and then tunneled away like a mad rat on acid into utter irrelevance with his deranged petty party spat with the Fool and his Lady Ping Pong Whatever. This article gets so much right about the horrors of the Progressive New Order system. But only the very useless Tories – the non wet non uniparty types like Rishi – can stop its cancerous spread beyond 2025, not the burnt out comet DC. Today was a tiny first and long overdue pushback.
Brilliant précis, if I may say so, although not sure if Rishi is that much less useless than the rest of his party. Opportunism and necessity may help in one or two areas, but I wouldn’t have much faith in this getting us very far.
I disagree. Thge Tories are not going to be a part of the solution. They are a big part of the problem. Partly because so many of them actually support the same sorts of policies as the left but also and seriously because they act as an anger sink which tricks their members, supporters and voters into thinking they might actually follow policies the people want.
As they did on the EU so with all the other problems noted above, they kept their members and supporters quiet while quietly signing up fopr every EU measure put before them.
As I recall we have had Conservative Party PMs since 2010. Inn those years they have advanced the cause of authoritarian leftism not least by appointing leftists to key roles in the bureaucracy and quangos but never ever a freedom loving libertarian in a usefull role – never.
All Cummings represents is an attack on political representation. Those years ago, he simply wanted to bypass the parliamentary Conservative Party and lead a recentred bureaucracy focused on a radical reform programme. Some of his ideas may be considerably more intelligent than Richard Tice’s replacement of N Farage’s EU referendum party but he has no current way to communicate them to a mass, populist audience.
This really is pretentious rubbish. Either Britain needs a political instrument to demolish Westminster and rebuild a working democracy, or it doesn’t. If it does, get on and do it – a party of the mainstream Somewheres, anti-Woke and anti-Thatcher, can not be that hard to create. Most people know it has to be done, so get serious and down to work. Roussinos, though, never helps us with the task at hand. There are always too many reasons why nothing can be done. It remains infinitely easier to describe the problem than to create a solution. Occasionally, with Roussinos, there is a sense that he perhaps does know what he’s talking about, but by the time you reach the end of a Roussinos piece, the doubt passes and you can be quite confident that he is just a wanker after-all.
This problem is now UnHerd’s problem. At some point, doesn’t it become important to actually do something? To change a decrepid polity instead of documenting every instance of its decay?
The root of the problem with today’s Western democracies is the voters; they’re moronic children. With such voters, anything that looks like democracy is fundamentally non-workable. There’s a reason the Romans replaced democracy with an Emperor.
Interesting piece, thank you.
Opeds like this are the reason I subscribe to Unherd so first of all thanks very much Aris. I find it sickening to have to admit to thinking Cummins is right about quite a lot and had a real chance with BJ to absolutely move things in a better direction. Any direction even. But they blew it. Cummins (like BJ) to me has zero credibility (even though he is likely right about some things) but his schoolyard excuse of why he took that drive from London to Barnard Castle during lockdown sticks in the gullet. Caught bang to rights and being shown as a total hypocrite and then trying to sleaze his way out of it with an excuse my 4-year old might have come up with… words fail me. However I do think he is right about lots of things.
Regarding reforming the useless House of Lords, I do think it useful to not have an elected other chamber. I cannot imagine anything worse about having to have elections about something else. If there are 800 HOL members, why not assign voting rights on a random basis to 100 each year and leave it at that. Change up each year so all HOL members get a chance. May make the whole process more manageable and get over the stupidity of the periodic politically driven honours lists.
Regarding career politicians which is what we have now, why not take a leaf out of another successful civilisation; the Romans. They had a minimum age requirement of 40 for holding public office. Feels about right to me. Not saying the quality was any better but the people would have had to have actually done something in life by then.
Not planning to hold my breath on anything though.
x
Does anyone know what this guy, Dominic Cummings, actually wants to accomplish? Because I’ve been baffled since day one.
He wants to make the machinery of government more democratically responsive, functionally agile and forward looking. He considers substantive policy programmes to be secondary to those goals.
That doesn’t explain anything.. but I’m guessing that was your point.
Arrogance on stilts:
“ … these people, our establishment, are manifestly incompetent, credulous, of middling intellectual capacity at their very best — he didn’t even try to disguise his contempt for them while he was working with them, as Laura Kuenssberg’s new documentary series shows — and yet they beat him.”
No, they did not beat him – Cummings is a weirdo, and beat himself by hitching his wagon to a chimaerical project like Brexit.
When you’ve run out of scapegoats, perhaps you might someday accept that Brexit was a farce from start to finish, cheered on by daydreamers (such as the writer), fomented by cynics (Johnson, Farage) and ridden over a cliff by dunderheads (Davis, Frostie, Trussed-up)
I so enjoy these lachrymose Brexiters, and their long after-life of self-pity and furious, scatter-gun blaming.
With success like yours, nobody needs failure, mate
How are Dom’s eyes these days? Still driving up and down the countryside to make sure he can see?!?!?