Why I fear the future of Britain (and Boris) is now in the hands of an unelected Svengali

DOMINIC Cummings, who is today installed in Downing Street as arguably the second most powerful man in Britain, first came to public attention when played by Benedict Cumberbatch in Channel 4’s Brexit: The uncivil War.

The drama told the behindthescenes story of Vote Leave’s successful campaign in the 2016 eu referendum.

Cumberbatch interpreted Cummings, the campaign director, as a sinister anti-hero and eminence grise controlling events.

Boris Johnson, officially the leader of Vote Leave, was given little more than a walkon role, portrayed as a slightly bumbling idiot figure who travelled the country to address public meetings according to a script written for him by the much more committed Cummings.

Johnson the monkey. Cummings the organ grinder.

Contemptuous

Three years later, and life is copying art. With one crucial difference. Cummings is no longer in the shadows, operating behind the scenes — this Svengali is out in the open.

Indeed, he seems to relish being seen in public, striding ostentatiously into Downing Street every morning.

now, we are all familiar with his shaven head, scruffy T-shirts, crumpled appearance and contemptuous and appraising eyes, his newspapers and bundles of documents carried in a Vote Leave bag.

According to some papers, and many ministers and civil servants I have spoken to recently, this is the man who is truly running Britain. It’s Cummings who oversees the no 10 grid which controls the timing of announcements and public events.

It’s in this capacity that he dispatches the PM up and down Britain, photographed in hospitals, sharing selfies with nurses, and on construction sites wearing a hard hat. It is also Cummings, not Johnson, who determines political strategy — hence the huge public spending announcements on health, extra police and other issues.

Indeed, it looks very much as if Johnson has become the public face of Cummings.

And this, I am afraid, is profoundly disturbing. no one ever voted for Cummings, he has little experience of life outside politicking yet he has been given unprecedented power at a moment of immense crisis in the national fortunes.

Within hours of Johnson becoming Tory leader two weeks ago, newly anointed special adviser Cummings called ‘ his’ staff together in the magnificent Downing Street first-floor state room.

He told them that he plans to deliver Brexit ‘ by any means necessary’.

It is a phrase that could not be more chilling, given that it was coined in the Sixties by extremist black rights activist Malcolm X when he rejected the peaceful approach of civil rights leader Martin Luther king.

Cummings’s use of this dangerous and inflammatory language was, in my view, not accidental. He used the term no fewer than six times in his speech that day.

unlike Malcolm X, Cummings was not advocating violence, but there’s certainly a touch of gangsterism about his reported threat to advisers who talk to journalists.

At a 7.55am meeting on Monday, he apparently told them they would be sacked without any right of appeal if they leaked information that damages the Government’s Brexit policy.

He would, he said, be able to persuade journalists to reveal their sources. ‘ My worth to journalists is far greater than yours . . . they will rat you out. You have no rights,’ he added.

And Cummings is certainly advocating ripping up the metaphorical rule book of the British state as it has existed for centuries. This became crystal clear over the weekend in the wake of a no 10 briefing in which Cummings told colleagues Johnson plans to stay in office even if he is voted out and defeated in a Commons confidence motion.

A Prime Minister would normally quit within minutes of such a humiliation. It goes without saying that such conduct would be a twofingered salute to our entire system of government.

experts say it could at once drag the Queen into politics because ultimately it would be her constitutional duty to order Johnson to step down.

But smashing the status quo is what Cummings is all about. He is, in truth, a far more revolutionary figure even than Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

This is a man who is utterly disdainful of the conventions of British public life.

He despises our tried and tested system of representative democracy, so much so that he was found in contempt of Parliament after refusing to appear in front of MPs on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee who were investigating fake news during the referendum campaign. (He said he offered to appear, but was rebuffed.)

Shame

Cummings is known for his loathing of the Civil Service. He has also been accused of telling lies to advance his political project. For example, the now infamous ‘£350 million for the NHS’ slogan on the side of the Vote Leave bus is believed by many to have been his handiwork.

Those who support him say this revolutionary approach is justified because Brexit cannot be delivered in any other way. Conventional means were tried and failed during Theresa May’s three-year premiership.

I disagree. Margaret Thatcher, the most radical Tory leader of the past century, was always respectful of Parliament, the Civil Service and the Monarchy.

Certainly, she used advisers. But she never became their creature, or as dependent on them as Johnson, to his shame, appears to be on Cummings.

The same applies to Winston Churchill, upon whom Johnson appears to model himself. Churchill was his own man. He had no need of an adviser to dictate to him what he thought and did.

There is no constitutional outrage in Johnson doing and saying what he is told to do by Cummings. That’s a matter for him, even if it is embarrassing and undignified.

Arrogance

But what a bitter irony that Brexit — which was supposed to ‘take back control’ — has ended up with Government policy so much in thrall to an unelected official.

By the way, don’t believe the fawning comments and profiles of Cummings by some journalists who kowtow to him because they need access and rely on his information.

Yes, he’s got lots of clever theories and has run successful political campaigns, but has little experience of real life.

He’s the supreme example of the type of nerdy political obsessives who have done so much damage to British politics over the past 25 years.

Indeed, one factor worries me more than anything else. There is a precedent for the Cummings/Johnson partnership that governs Britain as Brexit looms.

Tony Blair was also a creature of his powerful adviser, Alastair Campbell. They showed equal arrogance and contempt for Parliament.

They, too, were indifferent to truth. They, too, had little integrity. The Blair/Campbell double act ended in the tragedy of the Iraq war, the unnecessary deaths of countless Iraqis, 179 brave British service personnel and ultimately the rise of Islamic State.

We can only hope that the double act of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings has a happier outcome.