‘Boris’s brain’ takes his final bow
Boris Johnson’s chief adviser – dubbed ‘‘ Boris’s brain’’ by the British media – walked out the front door of 10 Downing St yesterday carrying a cardboard box, seeming to confirm rumours of his imminent departure.
Dominic Cummings could have left via the back door. So the theatrical show, staged for banks of news photographers, was widely seen as an acknowledgment that the political strategist who was instrumental to Brexit and to Johnson’s rise was officially out.
Cummings’ exploits alongside Johnson have made him a household name in Britain. His departure – or his ousting – dominated British front pages and news sites, beating out the death of serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, aka the Yorkshire Ripper, who succumbed to Covid-19.
Cummings served as campaign director of Johnson’s winning ‘‘Vote Leave’’ campaign in 2016, in which he was credited with creating the slogan ‘‘ Take Back Control’’ for the drive for the United Kingdom to exit the European Union.
Later, the political strategist helped Johnson win the 2019 general election in a landslide, under the banner ‘‘Get Brexit Done’’.
Cummings’ exit follows that of his fellow arch- Brexiteer, Lee Cain, a former tabloid journalist who became Johnson’s director of communications and chief spin doctor. Cain quit this week after he failed in a bid to become chief of staff.
The departures of Cain and Cummings mark a profound tilt in the axis of power among Johnson’s inner circle. EU diplomats have been wondering aloud whether this might mean that Johnson will soon erase his ‘‘red lines’’ to sign a post- Brexit free trade deal with the EU.
Downing St might also be recalculating the cost of a threatened no- deal Brexit, after US President Donald Trump lost his re-election bid. Trump was a big fan of Brexit, and had a friendly relationship with Johnson.
US President-elect Joe Biden and Johnson have never met – and Biden has warned the British that Brexit must not undermine
the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Ireland.
As the palace intrigue at the prime minister’s Downing St offices unfolded this week, Cummings insisted that he had not been shoved out but was fulfilling his earlier promise to make himself ‘‘ largely redundant’’ by the end of 2020.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said a Downing St insider had told her that Cummings ‘‘jumped because otherwise, he would be pushed, suggesting that in the last few days, the prime minister saw that the former Vote Leave team was just in it for themselves’’.
According to a Financial Times report, Cummings’ departure is ‘‘the latest fallout from the prime minister’s decision to break the stranglehold of proBrexit campaigners on his No 10 operation’’.
Johnson’s government has been beset by bungled messaging, a failure to secure a post- Brexit trade deal with the EU, and a mediocre response to the pandemic. Britain has the highest Covid-19 death toll in Europe.
According to British newspapers, Carrie Symonds, Johnson’s fiancee and former director of communications for the ruling
Conservative Party, played a pivotal role in changing the top jobs at Downing St.
Cummings is a polarising figure, celebrated by turns as a target- focused strategist who thinks big, and condemned as a pugnacious iconoclast who fancies himself smarter than he is.
Alongside Johnson, Cummings hoped to transform a clubby British bureaucracy into a streamlined machine powered by science and data. But he also ran headlong into Conservative Party backbenchers in the House of Commons, who took a distinct dislike to the maverick.
Cummings was at the centre of another political storm this year, when he and his wife, both having tested positive for the coronavirus, fled their London home during lockdown to travel 420 kilometres to a family farm. He said this was so a relative could care for his young son if he and his wife were both sick.
He was further mocked for taking a short trip to scenic Barnard Castle while he was supposed to be in isolation – to test his eyesight, he claimed.
Critics of Johnson and Cummings saw hypocrisy – one rule for Britain’s elites, another rule for the rest.
Alongside Johnson, Cummings hoped to transform a clubby British bureaucracy into a streamlined machine .