A scruffy genius that the Establishment can’t wait to see back in the wilderness
Dominic Cummings is a divisive figure whose defiant nature may yet prove to be his downfall
‘One thing that is brilliant about him is that he truly doesn’t care what people think about him’
‘[Cummings is] something like a Robespierre – someone determined to bring down things that don’t work’
ON THE night Britain finally left the EU, Boris Johnson knew who to thank. As the clinking of champagne flutes (filled naturally enough with English sparkling wine) rang out across the Downing Street State Room, the Prime Minister placed his arm around the shoulder of the slightly built, stooped, dome-headed man who stood beside him and hailed him “a genius”. The man was, of course, Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s closest aide.
After almost three years of impasse following the EU referendum, the UK was finally leaving Brussels behind.
Mr Cummings – memorably described as a “career psychopath” by David Cameron – had not only been instrumental in delivering Brexit in the first place through his stewardship of the Vote Leave campaign but had then rescued the project with his clarion call of “Get Brexit Done”.
Although in appearance, Mr Cummings, 48, looks as if he has just been dragged through a hedge backwards, the reality is he has emerged as the sharpest, most astute political operator, perhaps in a generation, and certainly since Tony Blair and Gordon Brown invented New Labour. It’s no wonder that Mr Johnson openly calls him a genius, although many of even Mr Cummings’ most ardent admirers don’t stop there, adding “evil” to the epithet. One admirer described him as a “brilliant maniac”.
Billed as the anti-establishment figure (despite attending private school and Oxford), Mr Cummings will argue his success has come on his own terms and without the usual deep network of political insiders and alliances.
His biggest supporter is Mr Johnson himself, which explains why he has been so keen to cling on to him during a weekend of unrelenting flak over his decision to breach lockdown and travel the length of England with his wife and child. Mr Cummings has made a career of not caring about the court of opinion inside the “Westminster bubble” but instead gauging what really matters out in the rest of the country; especially outside London. The Red Wall that fell to Mr Johnson during the election, handing him a stonking majority, was targeted by Mr Cummings, who understood the feeling of neglect and betrayal across a swathe of England. It is ironic, to say the least, that he has been caught out staying in privileged conditions in a converted barn on his parents’ property when the rest of the nation abided by a stricter lockdown.
A former colleague of Mr Cummings said: “Dom’s real strength may well be his downfall. One thing that is brilliant about him is that he truly doesn’t care what people think about him.
“It gives him a clarity of thinking, but I think it’s fair to say it is coupled somewhat with a lack of empathy. That is a problem now, reacting to this story with arrogance has done him no favours.”
True to form, Mr Cummings had all the disdain for the baying Fleet Street mob at his front door on Saturday of a lion surrounded by snapping jackals.
He told one inquisitor when asked whether driving his family 260 miles to Durham was a good look: “Who cares about good looks? It’s a question of doing the right thing. It’s not about what you guys think.”
After the Brexit night No10 party on Jan 31, the Prime Minister had unleashed Mr Cummings on a daring project to shake up the very nature of the way Britain is governed and reform the Civil Service.
It was a revolution against a cadre Mr Cummings is convinced are too cosy, well-remunerated and change-resistant, for which he had long prepared.
During his time working with the then education secretary Michael Gove he had referred to what he considered the educational establishment as “the Blob”. He considered himself at war with some officials, writing on his blog that one told him: “You’re a mutant virus, [and] I’m the immune system.”
His trenchant thinking – much of it done out loud – has brought him a raft of enemies on the Left and Right, so much so that even Tory MPS have called him a “political anarchist”, an “aggressive bully” and “an unelected foul-mouthed oaf ”.
He doesn’t care. He has taken the brickbats as a compliment.
A child of the North East, Dominic Mckenzie Cummings was born in Durham in 1971 to Robert, an oil rig project manager, and Morag, a teacher and behavioural specialist.
Mr Cummings went to fee-paying Durham School before gaining a first in ancient and modern history from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1994, where one of his former professors described him as “something like a Robespierre – someone determined to bring down things that don’t work”.
Mr Cummings might rail against the elite, but his father-in-law Sir Edward Humphry Tyrrell Wakefield is a baronet and lives in the sprawling Chillingham Castle, Northumberland. After university he moved to post-soviet Russia where he worked for a group attempting to set up an airline connecting
Samara in the south of the country to
Vienna.
Back in the UK, he honed his campaigning skills working on Business for Sterling, a group fighting against the UK joining the euro from 1999 to 2002. That led to a job as director of strategy for then-conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, but Mr Cummings left after eight months in frustration at the slow pace of modernisation.
Mr Cummings went on to write in an article for The Telegraph that Sir Iain was “incompetent, would be a worse prime minister than Tony Blair, and must be replaced”.
After founding a think tank, he would retreat to a “bunker” at his father’s farm near Durham reading science and history and “trying to understand the world”.
He would return to Westminster to work for Michael Gove from 2007 to 2014. As the then education secretary’s chief of staff, he wrote an essay about transforming Britain into a “meritocratic technopolis”.
He quickly ruffled feathers in Whitehall. Critics accused him of creating an “us-and-them aggressive, intimidating culture” while attempting to streamline the department.
Scandal hit when a leaked email from Mr Cummings demonstrated a keenness to keep discussions with Mr Gove and others to private email accounts only.
An email from the adviser told staffers that he would
“only answer things that come from Gmail accounts from people who I know who they are”. After a somewhat bumpy three years by Mr
Gove’s side, he eventually left his role in Government.
In 2015, Mr Cummings became campaign director and leading strategist of
Vote Leave and is credited with the ubiquitous
“Take Back Control” slogan and the campaign’s eventual victory.
On the evening of the referendum result, Mr
Cummings was pictured in shaky iphone footage standing on a table as he paid tribute to his team before punching a hole in the ceiling in the campaign’s HQ. During Brexit he also forged a close allegiance with Mr Johnson, who parachuted Mr Cummings into No10 when he became Prime Minister in June 2019.
His tenure at No10 has not been without its controversies. Mr Cummings was widely believed to be behind the Government’s high-stakes gamble to prorogue Parliament in August last year in an attempt to help smooth the course for Brexit.
The move alienated vast swathes of the backbenches, with 21 Tory MPS losing the whip for failing to fall in line. The Supreme Court ruled that the prorogation was unlawful a month later and MPS were recalled.
Influential backbencher Steve Baker, a key member of the 1922 Committee, said Mr Cummings is prone to creating “an awful lot of collateral damage”. It is Mr Cummings’ anarchic, rule-breaking streak that could now be his undoing.
Mr Johnson riskily faced the TV cameras yesterday and threw a lifebuoy to his loyal adviser.
Yet, his aide’s blind spot – his lack of fostering political allegiances – means Tory backbenchers are openly calling for his head while Cabinet members are sharpening their knives should more damning details over his trip emerge. Mr Johnson will not want to lose him and will certainly not wish to sack him. The Establishment will hate the prospect of Mr Cummings surviving this crisis, a situation, of course, which he will relish.