Scruffy urchin look is a damn chic, Dom
How you dress does not affect how you think. But it does say something about what you think of others. Boris Johnson’s oddball sidekick Dominic Cummings is arguably Britain’s most powerful man, the puppeteer pulling the PM’s strings.
The former Vote Leave supremo favours a scruffy, dishevelled, dragged through a hedge fund backwards look.
With his crumpled shirts, ripped jeans and scuffed trainers he should be kickflipping in a skateboard park, not rocking up for work at No10.
Sometimes he tops off this ensemble with a hoodie, but mostly with an armless, padded, quilted jerkin known as a gilet, which is French for vest.
I appreciate Cummings would rather be found dead in a ditch than be mistaken for a civil servant. But cultivating overgrown street urchin chic is less a fashion statement and more a statement of disdain, not just for the Government but by extension all of us. Someone must have shoehorned him into the suit he wore for Irish talks on Thursday. No wonder he looked downcast.
Ok, I too sometimes sport jeans and a T-shirt in Parliament – but only on non-sitting days.
And I don’t turn up in a tie any more because they are no longer required since Speaker John Bercow ruled we could dispense with them.
But if I do a TV show in which a male presenter is likely to wear one then I will too. I respect the host’s dress code. It’s just good manners.
Cummings is No10’s unelected guest. And it’s rude to dress down to suit himself when everyone else is dressed to suit the surroundings. Otherwise you might as well put the seat of government in a garden shed.
I remember when Cummings worked for Michael Gove he was more aggressive than persuasive. Which made me less likely to give his boss good publicity.
Now Cummings has really powerful figures to browbeat. Last week he was suspected of rel ea sing No 1 0 ’ s rambling, 800- word Brexit report. His authorship is not denied.
It rubbished Ireland’s Leo Varadkar, Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron, and threatened punishment for EU countries backing a Brexit delay. It concluded: “Parliament is as popular as the clap.”
So there you have it. The writer who no one cast a vote for despises representative democracy, its leaders, foreign leaders and foreign countries, and is obsessed with dumping Europe whatever the cost or the ordinary folk it would hurt.
Surely it’s a national scandal to have someone at the very top of government who drips contempt like rainwater off a gilet.
This is not a fashion statement, it’s disdain for all of us House of Commons wifi is patchy, which makes connecting to it a nightmare. But it’s entertaining to try because it throws up all the phones you can pair with. So come on. Own up. Which of you MPs goes by the name German Sausage Boy? And fess up, Pink Duck.