Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

So far I think he's coming across as broadly open and self-critical trying to help explain what went wrong, not a former Spad out to settle scores - yet.


Edit: Cummings just quoted a Whatsapp he sent Johnson in early March: "the Cabinet Office is terrifyingly shit" yadda yadda we need to force the pace etc. And then the BBC news host had to cut in to "apologise for any offensive language you might have heard there" a bit like the crowdless football matches

Edit: And this is probably the most strong attack line:

Cummings says Matt Hancock:

'Should have been fired for 15 or 20 things', including 'lying' in meetings and in public

Said he lied constantly and Cummings claims to have told Johnson repeatedly Hancock should be fired as did the Cabinet Secretary and many other senior people.

Also a comment from the Deputy Cabinet Secretary Helen MacNamara apparently saying "we have no plan. We are absolutely fucked."

Plus lots of descriptions of "classic groupthink".

[Sheilbh]

Most shocking line right now is allegedly the Cabinet Secretary on March 12th advising Johnson that he should go on TV and encourage people to have "covid parties" like "chickenpox parties" - apparently Cummings' advice was not to do that. But that was 4 days before we got the first stay at home advice and about a week before lockdown

Now being asked to provide examples of when Hancock lied and listing them. He apparently made notes of some of these at the time and has been asked to provide them which he will.

Ian Dunt's thread is well worth following:
https://twitter.com/IanDunt/status/1397492094923575297

Edit: Very interesting how much he's defended Rishi

But also Dominic Cummings on how our political system has gone profoundly wrong if the last election provided a choice between "Cummings says a system that offers the choice of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn "has gone badly wrong". Also "crazy" that Cummings himself was in a senior position. "Crackers" that both him and Boris were in charge". Says politics needs to consider what it is about political parties that produces a Johnson v Corbyn competition, and why Whitehall over-promotes people who follow process rather than being the best people for the role

Again I think he is normally pretty good on the analysis side of things

So far it's quite funny watching the Labour members of the Committee trying to sound more critical of the government (of which he was part) than Cummings.

Edit: Key comment on Hancock - this is a very serious allegation if this was the conclusion reached by the Cabinet Secretary - the head of the Civil Service - about the Health Secretary:

Ian Dunt
@IanDunt
"In mid-April, the sec of state told us everything is fine with PPE. When I came back [after getting covid] almost the first meeting I had in the Cabinet room was about the disaster with PPEand how... hostpials all over the country were running out."
Hancock blamed others, including the chancellor. Cummings asked the Cabinet secretary to investigate. The Cab sec said: "It's completely untrue, I have lost confidence in the secretary of state's honesty in these meetings."

Edit: And again from Beth Rigby:

Cummings says former cab sec Sedwill shared his view on Hancock. Says when PM back to No 10 from hospital, cab sec said to PM: "The British system is not set up to deal with a SoS who repeatedly lies in meetings"

Extremely serious allegation. Cttee'll want to hear from Sedwill

And as someone who's been banging these drums for the entire pandemic tough to disagree with this either:

Q: Why do you think compliance with self-isolation was not higher?

Cummings says one of the problem was the science advice being given to the public. He says the government too much focus on hand washing, and not enough on ventilation.

And he says the government did not promise to compensate people for any salary they lost.

Edit: Seriously think there's a lot to this criticism of (some of) the  Labour MPs on the Committee:

James Snell
@James_P_Snell
The socialism of idiots: more concern that some people made a little too much money from the government's mishandling of a generation-defining crisis than the government's mishandling of a crisis killing hundreds of thousands and forcing procurement to rely on those it did.
The socialism of idiots part two: seeming to care far more about the fact that nasty private companies were involved with the NHS than the necessity and quality of the job they did.
Seriously -- quoting Amnesty about data rights when hundreds of thousands lie dead -- good lord.

Just had someone talking about GDPR and concerns around what Amazon were doing (Cummings isn't sure) - I'm a data protection lawyer and I'm not convinced GDPR would make my list of top 20 questions of the PM's Chief Advisor during a generational failure - especially when he seems to be fairly open and critical of the government.

Also based on my Twitter everyone is simultaneously shocked at how badly we are governed and also shit-posting about Barnard's Castle, Laura Kuenssberg and him referencing the Spiderman meme. Maybe part of the reason we're so badly governed is we're all so easily distracted by the ephemera

Pretty damning just now of Johnson - apparently (and this is self-serving) Cummings saying he tried to resign and told Johnson that Johnson was more afraid of Cummings trying to fix the chaos than the chaos itself. He said Johnson laughed and said he's right and chaos isn't that bad because it means no-one knows who is in charge so they have to go to him (Johnson)

Edit: He's just accused Hancock of lying to everyone in government on care homes. He's said that Hancock told people that people being discharged from hospitals into care homes were being tested for covid and would only be discharged if the test was negative. That was untrue but only discovered by everyone else later with tragic consequences.

As a total aside - but a sign of the future - this is the first time I've ever seen someone senior in British politics is clearly very online. I totally get it, but there's at least two times when he's referenced memes to explain something.

[The Larch]

S, it's ok, you can do two or three posts in a row, you don't need to edit the same post over and over to include more stuff to the point of making it incomprehensible and impossible to follow. 

[Sheilbh]

S, it's ok, you can do two or three posts in a row, you don't need to edit the same post over and over to include more stuff to the point of making it incomprehensible and impossible to follow. 

Soz

[The Larch]

S, it's ok, you can do two or three posts in a row, you don't need to edit the same post over and over to include more stuff to the point of making it incomprehensible and impossible to follow. 

Soz

It's ok.

[Sheilbh]

So Barnard's Castle came up and was actually interesting - from the Guardian liveblog:

Q: Why was there no plan to protect people in care homes?

Cummings says they were told in No 10 that people would be tested before being sent back to care homes and they were told there was a shielding plan. Neither of those things was correct.

He says some people from the Cabinet Office, the government digital service and the communities department then got together to get the government data systems to talk to each other, so that they could produce a plan for shielding.

Q: What about social care? It was reported that in February you described the government's plans as herd immunity, protecting the economy, and it being too bad if some old people died.

Cummings says that quote came from a Sunday Times story (paywall) that was a wrong. He never said that. And the story mentioned a meeting that never took place. He says it led to people coming to his home threatening to kill him. The journalist involved later said it was the worst professional mistake of his career, he says.

[...]

Cummings says he did not disclose last year that security threats were major factor in lockdown-busting trip to Durham

Evans asks about Cummings' trip to Durham, and Barnard Castle.

Cummings says there is information about this not in the public domain.

He says in the autumn of 2019 he had to leave home for a few weeks because he was receiving threats.

And he says there was another incident when his wife was in the house alone, and there were people outside making threats.

He says that at that point he discussed this with officials in government, and he agreed to move his family out of London.

After it emerged that he had left London, he had to hold the press conference.

He says he made a terrible mistake. He decided it was best not to discuss the security issues affecting his decision to leave London because he thought that would just make the situation worse.

He says that this was a mistake.

Cummings says his wife insisted on family returning to London with Cummings

Jeremy Hunt says threats are totally unacceptable. But one thing he did not understand. If he moved his family out of London for security reasons, why did he move them back?

Cummings says he was very ill. He thought he might die. If it was up to him, he would have left his family in Durham. But he was quite ill, and his wife was worried about what might happen if he collapsed alone in the house. He says he was under pressure to return to work because the government was in free fall. His wife insisted on returning to London with him.

[Sheilbh]

Basic point here: media/country maybe underestimated Cummings' influence before the election and wildly overestimated it after the election. "Fundamentally the prime minister and I did not agree after March on Covid."

Cummings saying if he was in charge there would have been harder lockdown, border closures, mandatory masks etc from then. Johnson disagreed (and changes his mind 10 times a day/is very influenced by campaigns by the Telegraph/backbench unrest) and by autumn was saying we never should have locked down and he should have been the mayor in Jaws. Again he is interestingly excusing Sunak - Cummings, the Cabinet Secretary, the Chancellor agreed on things and wanted a policy agreed written down and stuck to. Johnson disagreed and would change his mind after a nasty editorial by the Telegraph.

This does broadly match what a lot of reporting has said.

His basic narrative seems to be scientific advice and basic assumptions were wrong (the British people won't back lockdown, closing borders is ineffective and partly racist/associated with Trump and "China vaccine"), Hancock and the Department of Health were a disaster and lacking urgency. So there was urgent panicked course correction in early March. Until then his basic line is that almost anyone would have made the same bad decisions as Johnson, because there were systemic failures. But after March while there were still systemic failures Johnson repeatedly made bad decisions (against Cummings' advice).

Interesting on how the vaccines went well which goes to his general criticism of Whitehll. That, unlike the rest of Whitehall, there was clear responsibility and someone in charge of it Kate Bingham built a team of experts who had a clear line of reporting directly to the PM (not the Department of Health - which they were all perceiving as failing). But also it was frictionless - basically everyone agreed very quickly. Also they decided to build and subsidise everything as they were going along which is the opposite of normal stage-by-stage government process/accounting - but they thought doing it parallel would be expensive but basically worth the gamble because of the possible upside.

[Sheilbh]

And interestingly he things the vaccine program over variants may not be anywhere near as successful because Kate Bingham's left and the vaccine program has now moved into business-as-usual/"Whitehall entropy". Bit of personnel and organisation becoming institutionalised.

[Sheilbh]

This has been utterly damning - they're on a break now - but it hasn't even covered the September/Autumn decision-making which I think is probably the worst and going to be even worse. And it does feel honest/truthful if selective.

I think six hours of evidence so far.

I don't think this will have an impact politically. But, especially as this is the first Parliamentary inquiry and is mainly focused on "lessons learned", I hope they really are but don't have much hope. There's a huge amount of structural criticism of the state here.

[Josquius]

It's going to be another one for the big pile of shit that logically should collapse the government but  the general public just won't care about.

[Sheilbh]

It's going to be another one for the big pile of shit that logically should collapse the government but  the general public just won't care about.

On the political implications, I think this is basically correct:

Political implications are hard to decipher. Public already think the Govt messed up the handling of the pandemic. But because Labour lacked the courage to argue for an alternative, the public largely (& wrongly) think no one could have done any better in an unprecedented crisis.

Fascinatingly he's still protecting and praising Sunak a lot on autumn lockdown and furlough

Blame is entirely with Johnson on this in his view.

Edit:And again in June or July Johnson didn't think "thank goodness we did the first lockdown and we should have gone earlier", he thought "I should have been the mayor from Jaws and was pushed into this by Dom etc". That shaped his view in autumn, he basically thought the numbers were gamed to force him into lockdown - and he was listening to Gupta, Tegnel etc

Cummings heard the "let the bodies pile high" comment but it was on 31 October.

[Josquius]

Angling for a job with PM in waiting Sunak?
The populist mob sure seem to be big on him.

[Sheilbh]

Angling for a job with PM in waiting Sunak?

It's fascinating he's even not really having a go at "eat out to help out". Basically saying that it was a consequence of the PM's strategy wanting to re-open (covid's over) and students going back etc.

But yeah angling for a job or influence would be my guess - and possibly so obviously that it actually hurts Sunak

[Sheilbh]

I mean, same:

Adam Bienkov
@AdamBienkov
"Fundamentally I regarded him as unfit for the job," says Dominic Cummings of Boris Johnson.

In addition this is a fairly striking claim:

Cummings: part of why I quit was PM's partner Carrie Symonds interfered in No.10 appointments to help friends.
"She was trying to overturn outcome of an official process about hiring a particular job, in a way which was not only completely unethical but was also clearly illegal."

A very dim Tory MP currently trying to defend the reasoning of why Johnson didn't go for a second lockdown in in autumn

[Sheilbh]

He's praised Raab and Sunak just now. But it is incredible how much he has it out for Hancock:

Cummings:

'Matt Hancock used Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty as shields for himself. Yes.'

'He could always say if things go wrong, we'll blame the scientists. I saw him discuss that with the Prime Minister.'

'It was one of many appalling things that Hancock did.'

Says he also was trying to persuade Johnson to fire Hancock. Johnson's view was Hancock stays because he's the person you fire after the public inquiry, Cummings argued if they kept Hancock the autumn would be a disaster and cost lives way before the public inquiry.

And an MP reading out a screenshot of a Whatsapp by the Sun political editor from someone in Number 10, describing Cummings as a "disingenuous little fucker" - poor BBC News
https://twitter.com/scottygb/status/1397567059031171074?s=20

Edit: The actual line on firing Hancock:

Paul Waugh
@paulwaugh
Cummings says of Hancock: "I said sack him almost every week. Sometimes almost every day"
"He was told that you should not sack him, you should keep him there because we need a person to fire when the inquiry happens. I thought..if you leave him there we're going to have another set of disasters in the autumn."