It's fairly clear that Dominic Cummings is a man on a mission. If you cross him, watch out !
Yesterday's appearance before a House of Commons committee proved to be a fine opportunity for him to 'grand stand', giving the world the benefit of his wisdom, both in foresight and hindsight, while throwing lorry loads of manure at those whom he now despises. Rather strangely, some of these are the same people with whom he worked, apparently in close harmony with, for prolonged periods, notably Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Having worked with Mr Johnson to bring about Brexit and been his right hand man in Downing Street, Cummings now claims that Johnson is incompetent and that his being Prime Minister is almost unbelievable. So is Mr Johnson a man who deserved Cummings' loyalty and support, or is he an incompetent fool ? Whichever it is, Cummings' account shows him to have been wrong in his assessment at least half of the time.
Another who has come in for huge criticism from Cummings is the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock. Mr Hancock has been accused of being a 'serial liar' as well as simply being incompetent. In Cummings' view, Mr Hancock should have been, and almost was, sacked several times over the last year as he repeatedly misled or lied to his colleagues about his department's progress with various aspects of the government's response to the COVID epidemic.
Cummings made his assorted allegations while indicating that there was evidence to support them but failing to be very forthcoming with any. He offered to make available various text messages and other records of his own, but refused to be as open as the committee would have liked, citing the privacy of other parties. If his accusations are true, surely these other parties will be prepared to give corroborating statements to the committee and would therefore have no problem with being named and sharing their own records; if they do not, this will throw considerable doubt on Cummings' recollections and statements.
Cummings hates the Prime Minister and has a serious dislike of Mr Hancock. Both opted to take actions with which Cummings did not agree and ultimately Cummings left his role in Downing Street under a cloud; this cloud was, of course, at least partly of his own making through his highly ill-advised trip from London to Durham and thence across some 60 miles to 'check his eyesight', before returning to London, all during a period of extreme lockdown. At this time, Cummings was fully supported by the Prime Minister and yet, little more than 6 months later, he stormed out of Downing Street threatening all manner of recriminations.
Cummings has history. For a few months in 2002, he was Director of Strategy for the Conservative Party under Ian Duncan Smith; his 8 month stay in this role ended with him resigning and calling his boss 'incompetent'. He followed this job with 2 campaigning roles, firstly founding the short lived 'New Frontiers Foundation' and then 'North East Says No', an organisation dedicated to rejecting the notion of a regional assembly for the north east of England. Next came a brief period at the Spectator magazine, where he caused mayhem by publishing a cartoon of Muhammed before returning the Conservative Party to work for Michael Gove for 7 years. That he survived for such a length of time in this latter role seems to have owed much to Mr Gove's willingness to turn a blind eye, or deaf ear, to his assistant's working methods, there being a number of debatable actions attributed to him during this period, including at least one of bullying.
Even when working with the 'Vote Leave' campaign, Cummings continued to have difficult relationships with colleagues and his overall contempt for others seems to have continued up until the present day. Cummings clearly has little time for anyone who doesn't agree with him or act in accordance with his perceived notions of what is right. Anyone who does not accept his view of the world is automatically incompetent, thick, stupid or whatever other words come to mind. His own actions are always well-meaning, even when, as he has admitted, he may have been wrong, while others are simply stupid regardless of whether their actions are well-meaning or not.
Cummings has set his sights on destroying Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and, no doubt, a few others as well. Whether he succeeds or goes the way of other vengeful egotists is yet to be discovered.
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