Data ‘svengali’ who was behind Gove and Bojo’s shock Brexit vote victory
DOMINIC Cummings’ reputation as a master political manipulator is the stuff of legend at Westminster.
To Brexit fans, he is the genius who singlehandedly won the EU referendum. Foes don’t deny he is a genius, but insert an adjective in front: evil. It is water off a duck’s back to foul-mouthed, scraggy-haired, gap-toothed, buccaneering, Right-wing, mad professor ‘Dom’, as he is universally known.
On referendum night in June 2016, he celebrated in suitably wild style by leaping on to a table at the Vote Leave London HQ and smashing his fist through the ceiling as he addressed adoring Brexit staff.
Mr Cummings’ Svengali-like ability to use the internet to woo voters to leave the EU is said to be one of the main reasons the Brexiteers won. He claims he unlocked the key to using the web with the help of ‘three astrophysicists from the West Coast of America’.
As campaign director of Vote Leave – fronted by Boris Johnson and Mr Cummings’ political ally, Michael Gove – he gave £4 million to Canadian company AggregateIQ, which is closely connected to controversial fellow data campaign experts Cambridge Analytica. Mr Cummings’ feared reputation as a practitioner of the political dark arts led to David Cameron’s No 10 press chief Andy Coulson banning Mr Gove from employing him as a special adviser when he became Education Secretary in 2010.
A year later, when the ex-News of the World editor was forced to quit over the hacking scandal, Mr Gove recruited Mr Cummings.
He proceeded to wage a behind-the-scenes war on Mr Cameron, whom he despised, describing him as ‘a sphinx without a riddle – he bumbles from one shambles to another without the slightest sense of purpose’.
The feeling was mutual: Mr Cameron called Mr Cummings, 46, a ‘career sociopath’.
Mr Cummings, who left Oxford in 1994 and failed in an attempt to set up a Russian airline, has spent most of his time since the referendum at Chillingham Castle in Northumberland with his wife, Mary Wakefield – deputy editor of the Brexit supporting Spectator – and their son.