The PM should listen to his instincts
For a long time, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings were essential to each other. But they also had sharply different characters and political needs, and the alliance has now come to the end of the road. After a bizarre few days of civil war at No 10, Mr Cummings has departed his role as chief adviser to the Prime Minister, leaving last night rather than at the end of the year as he had previously indicated.
This is probably just as well, because there can be no ambiguity at the top of government. There is one man in charge – Mr Johnson – and he now needs a team that will serve him with talent and dedication, be open to advice, and respect the parliamentary party. The Prime Minister needs to build this team fast. The next few weeks could define his premiership.
This partnership was fruitful. One cannot forget the chaos of 2019, when it looked as if Britain might never get out of the EU. Mr Cummings and the Vote Leave team took a hard-as-nails approach and, though it nearly tore the Tories apart, it worked. Labour was goaded into an election it could not win; the Red Wall was broken. The big question, however, was how to integrate a campaigning machine into government. It did not help that Mr Cummings resisted assimilation.
He wanted power without responsibility, to call the shots without being a public figure at No 10, and that is essentially why there was no chief of staff. No one could be more important than Mr Cummings, so unless he or an ally took the top job, the position stayed empty. He wanted a war with the media but not to handle them; he wanted to drag the Tories in his own direction, yet would not charm them. And if the big plan was to remodel government, to make it more effective, would it not have made more sense to reach out to MPS, to decentralise some decision-making and empower imaginative ministers? None of that happened. Anyone who was not a friend of Vote Leave was out of the loop, which meant the only way left to influence the Prime Minister was via his fiancée.
Mr Cummings is a blunt man: he left through the front door, carrying a box, rather than take a diplomatic exit away from the cameras. Mr Johnson has a theatrical flair, too, but behind the scenes is infinitely more subtle, inclined to delegate and govern through kindness and encouragement; it takes an equally subtle manager to work out precisely what he really wants and help him to get it. The Prime Minister has put that kind of team together before, when he was mayor of London, and he no doubt understands that for No 10 to work effectively it needs a healthy atmosphere; it must serve one master; it must be an effective administrative machine; and it must have a guiding philosophy. Brexit has provided a sense of direction, and Mr Cummings’ departure does not mean that the Government will swallow any old deal that the EU offers.
But when the history books are written, what will probably most define this term will be Mr Johnson’s handling of the coronavirus, the roll-out of vaccines and the economic recovery. Will Britain tax and spend? Or will it seek a market-led recovery with lower taxes and a smaller, more effective state that has learnt the lessons of the pandemic? On these issues, the Prime Minister should listen to his own instincts, to his MPS and to the people who voted for him. It is the public’s trust that matters the most.