Dominic Cummings - a new kind of (anti-)hero..

[Cockney Sparrow]

From the BBC News website:

14:33
"Vallance 'deserves enormous credit' - Cummings

Dominic Cummings says Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance was among those calling for a vaccine taskforce to be set up outside of the Department of Health.

Vallance had worked in the private sector on vaccines, Cummings says, so he understood what was needed and also made sure the contracts were sorted out.

"Patrick deserves absolutely enormous credit for his role" in the vaccine taskforce Cummings says, and "he deserves enormous credit from the country for doing it".

When it comes to vaccines, "it is unarguable what should have happened" he argues.

People should have been paid to take part in vaccine trials - and their families compensated if they died or things went wrong.

"We would have hugely cut the time" and possibly got people jabbed by September he argues.

"We have got to think now" about what we do in the future if there is another crisis he says."

To be fair to the views Cummings advances, this great success came about and (although using seconded public servants, with others) was conceived and took place, start to finish, outside the structures (ministry, Pub Health England etc) of government.

Cummings also pointed out that in such a mortal, fast moving crisis, the country needed leadership with the powers of a dictator to cut through the structures of "ministers - policy" / "departments - civil servants - "delivery"". Something akin to a military situation. In the case of Covid, though, considering who had the political power, maybe just as well not on this occasion.

[ahinton]

Yes, the public as presented seems to prefer waiting until a story accords with their own viewpoint, ignoring the growing caseload of pre-existing evidence. I would describe this intransigence as British bloody mindedness rather than fair mindedness.

Sorry about the typos - now corrected!

[Richard Barrett]

I still believe one has to point out that this is a personal war between two people who are ultimately on the same side, whose disagreement is on tactics rather than the very principles which brought them together and define the extent of their differences. In the end we will be proved right.

Exactly. I won't be displeased if Cummings brings Johnson down but that doesn't make him any less of a Tory.

[pastoralguy]

Just as an aside, if the Royal Family are as informed on the running of the country as it's claimed they are, then this sorry series of events shows how unbelievably irrelevant the 'Royal Family' are.

[Mandryka]

Exactly. I won't be displeased if Cummings brings Johnson down but that doesn't make him any less of a Tory.

They’re all tories, government and opposition are all bloody tories. Hopeless!

[eighthobstruction]

....Shakepearean....

[teamsaint]

They’re all tories, government and opposition are all bloody tories. Hopeless!

Well quite. And with an increasingly and alarmingly authoritarian direction of travel , egged on by a mostly compliant media .
And any idea that Cummings is operating for the public good is utterly laughable. “My enemy’s enemy is my friend “ as a mantra is not really terribly helpful right now.

[teamsaint]

Exactly. I won't be displeased if Cummings brings Johnson down but that doesn't make him any less of a Tory.

Is he really , at heart , a tory ?
He seems to me like a disrupter- dabbler , who has played around with things like accelerationism, and is smart enough to cope at a high level without an actually coherent political philosophy.
I think, fwiw, he has the capability to do useful things, ( particularly as he probably has his finger not too far from the pulse of how the world is changing ) but is much more likely to leave a terrible trail of destruction.

[Richard Barrett]

He seems to me like a disrupter- dabbler , who has played around with things like accelerationism, and is smart enough to cope at a high level without an actually coherent political philosophy.

The lack of a coherent political philosophy is of course something he has in common with the leader of the opposition; ideas like accelerationism, though, are surely not inconsistent with Toryism at least since Thatcher, in that they involve treading cruelly over most members of society on the way to advancing the interests of the wealthy.

[Bert]

Is he really , at heart , a tory ?

Not even close to being a Tory ....but we live in the times of reductivist political commentary

[muzzer]

For all the personality disorders he so clearly exhibits, Cummings is an operator who knows exactly how to play the system and yesterday’s performance was only the latest in a long line of carefully-calculated displays aimed at exculpating himself before BJ gets the chance to throw him under the bus. Those select committees are like being savaged by the proverbial dead sheep and I would far rather see a decent barrister given 10 minutes at him under oath than the lengthy psychodrama playing out like its own miniseries, binge-watched by a desperate populace starved of opposition. Johnson has such a massive majority and the country is so relieved to be allowed back to the pub that nothing flung yesterday will stick.

[LMcD]

Like polar bears.

I would imagine that the average polar bear spends more time worrying about ending up in Whipsnade Zoo than it does ranking politicians and the like in order of untrustworthiness.

[Richard Barrett]

ranking politicians and the like in order of untrustworthiness

And when someone who clearly is trustworthy is elected as a party leader the rest of that sorry gang close ranks and eventually find ways to bring him down and dismiss that whole episode as irrelevant. We've seen last year what happens when the people supposedly in charge rate keeping big business happy ("like the mayor in Jaws", "let the bodies pile up" etc.) above keeping people alive and healthy, and to that extent Cummings hasn't told us anything that wasn't already abundantly clear, as is the somewhat less frequently cited fact that if the 2019 election had gone the other way those priorities would have been the other way around. Not that time should be wasted on counterfactuals, but people voted for Johnson, and behind every Johnson there are people like Cummings, not a hero or an antihero or indeed a new kind of anything. His like has been seen before in the form of people like Keith Joseph.

[cloughie]

I would imagine that the average polar bear spends more time worrying about ending up in Whipsnade Zoo than it does ranking politicians and the like in Order of Untrustworthiness.

Maybe it will be a new title introduced in the Queen’s birthday (dis)honours.

[french frank]

And when someone who clearly is trustworthy is elected as a party leader the rest of that sorry gang close ranks and eventually find ways to bring him down and dismiss that whole episode as irrelevant.

"Trustworthiness" is largely a subjective concept. Who 'trusts' X, and why? When it comes to 'leadership', trust is largely an article of faith when there is little evidence about leadership qualities on which to base an opinion - other than an individual's personal experience.

And, when Cummings says Johnson is 'not fit' to be Prime Minister, it is both his opinion and based on his personal experience (and in part, hindsight). But as the saying goes: 'When false Theeves fall out, true men come to their own,' so some good for the majority may come from this. But Cummings as hero or antihero? Just a false Theef, surely?