Civil servants might want to mud off their CVs. Members of parliament, brace, brace, brace. Dominic Cummings – the political weather-maker behind the tide that delivered Brexit and raised and drowned Boris Johnson – is eyeing up a Westminster come again, of types.
“I’d spend extra time on SW1 relying how issues play out,” Cummings advised the Guardian after hypothesis about his intentions within the Westminster postcode, “however I are not looking for a job there. My efforts will solely be serving to folks of any social gathering pushing in what I contemplate a great route, I’m completely satisfied dwelling away from SW1 and SW1 for positive feels the identical about me.”
The set off for a renewed curiosity within the beanie-wearing politico from Durham, memorably portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in Brexit: The Uncivil Battle, has been the latest revelation of a secret dinner with Nigel Farage shortly earlier than Christmas.
It has prompted a lot pleasure in Westminster. The 2 males had been daggers drawn for numerous years, partly on account of a conflict between their respective organisations (Cummings’ Vote Depart of which he was marketing campaign director and the Farageist Grassroots Out) over which might be the official Brexit marketing campaign group.
Farage described Cummings, who went on to be Johnson’s chief adviser in Downing Road, as a “horrible nasty little man”. Final summer season, Cummings mentioned the re-emergence of Farage on the political scene was “miserable”, including that “15% of the nation [is] just about like Farage and hates everyone else”. He warned that Farage didn’t supply options.
It was one thing of a turn-up, then, for the 2 males to interrupt bread. Of the dinner, the Reform chief has mentioned solely that they talked “concerning the blob and what had been the sensible issues of coming into authorities and never having the ability to do what you wished to do”.
In his first public feedback concerning the assembly, Cummings mentioned it had been a “pleasant chat”.
The main focus, the 53-year-old added, had been “the core issues that now we have a damaged Whitehall, a disgraceful and shattered Tory social gathering clogging up the social gathering system, the right way to shake all of it up most successfully. And the right way to deliver a few of the nice folks on this nation now excluded from authorities into it to exchange the shitshow all of us need to stay with day-after-day.”
“The present crop of MPs and officers by definition can’t repair themselves,” Cummings mentioned. “It wants an out of doors power – simply because the vaccine taskforce or fast checks or sewage monitoring did in 2020, profitable solely due to forces exterior to Whitehall forcing Whitehall to behave in a different way towards its default mode.”
Cummings had pressed on Farage the necessity for him to construct credible insurance policies in an effort to recruit top-quality candidates and appeal to donors, it’s understood.
In flip, Farage, 60, is alleged to have made a nod to his personal mortality. Reform could also be on a trajectory to win 100 seats on the subsequent election in 2029, placing the social gathering within the place the place it may execute a reverse take over of the Conservative social gathering.
However Farage can be nudging at Lord Palmerston’s report as Britain’s oldest first-time prime minister ought to he achieve success towards Keir Starmer in 2035. He can be into his 80s by the top of a second time period, ought to that come to move.
Farage mentioned “he didn’t need to wait till 2035 so wished to win a majority in 2029”, Cummings mentioned.
Not everybody who is aware of the maverick political strategist is satisfied that he would flip down a chance to be a part of that.
“Farage is – very like Boris, though in numerous methods – a deeply flawed particular person,” mentioned a buddy. “So the query is, do you simply throw your toys out the pram and say all the lead actors are shit, I don’t need to work with them, plague on all their homes? Or do you try to work with the cranks that the political course of has chucked up? I feel he’s in all probability discovered himself within the latter camp.”
A second supply mentioned Cummings was insistent in non-public in addition to in public that he would “by no means work for Farage”. However everybody can agree that he has received his previous vim and verve again over the previous 12 months.
After being fired by Johnson in November 2020, he helped engineer the Partygate scandal that introduced his former boss down however then turned one thing of a recluse, pals mentioned.
Consistent with the picture of a tortured genius in exile, he bought a £161,000 dwelling on Lindisfarne – the Holy Island simply off the Northumberland coast.
A buddy added, nevertheless, that it was in Cummings’ nature to vanish solely to dramatically re-emerge. That he did in October 2023 to provide proof on the Covid inquiry and chew up what was left of Johnson’s status, describing the previous prime minister as “a symptom of the system’s illness”.
He nonetheless holds Johnson in contempt, pals say. Cummings additionally believes the Conservative social gathering is shifting in the direction of extinction – one thing he can be happy to nudge alongside.
In Might final yr, earlier than the final election, he floated the thought of a startup social gathering and began speaking to potential figureheads, it’s understood, together with those that are former members of the armed forces, though that plan seems to have been dropped.
Cummings is now “hedging his bets”, advised a buddy.
He retains a couple of disciples throughout the parliamentary ranks of the Conservative social gathering, together with Katie Lam, the MP for Weald of Kent, a former Downing Road colleague who received on the unsuitable facet of Johnson’s spouse, Carrie Symonds, after nudging the household canine, Dilyn, away from her purse over which he had cocked his leg.
Of late, although, Cummings has been targeted on serving to a cross-party motion led by the tutorial Dr Lawrence Newport, who first got here to public prominence together with his profitable marketing campaign to ban XL bully canine.
The 2 males are understood to have bonded over their respective tales of receiving demise threats for his or her campaigning efforts.
Newport has moved on to champion a harder strategy to crime and, extra lately, a plan for financial development, together with the implementation of a totally fledged infrastructure invoice. Cummings has opened up his contacts e-book and is alleged to be a relentless supply of recommendation.
“The hope very a lot is that it’s a motion that grows in dimension, and the extra it grows, the noisier it may be,” Newport mentioned. “The concept is to create one thing that politicians need to hearken to in order that they perceive that there’s a constituency of people that really actually care about prosperity.”
On the first On the lookout for Development (LFG) occasion in December, Cummings was a keynote speaker. He then led a coverage “workshop” on Saturday at an occasion attended by about 200 folks, together with the Labour MP Chris Curtis and the shadow enterprise secretary, Andrew Griffith.
“I’ve talked extra to Labour MPs and spads [special advisers] than Tories in final yr [because] they’re extra concerned about why Whitehall is damaged, what we began doing in 2020 to repair it and so forth,” Cummings mentioned. “Virtually zero Tories have an interest on this as 2021-24 confirmed. And broader Tory ecosystem can also be not concerned about how energy actually works in Whitehall.
“I’ve been serving to Lawrence Newport on crime and LFG as a result of he’s making an attempt to push issues in good instructions and LFG is partly about discovering expertise outdoors politics and getting it concerned in politics.”
Cummings wrote lately on his Substack weblog, for which he has greater than 60,000 subscribers, that such campaigns could possibly be the “‘third power’ that might assist affect issues a method or one other at an important second”.
Ought to such an important second come, who would guess towards him being within the thick of it?
Supply hyperlink
