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Merry Christmas, Dominic Cummings Is Leaving Number 10

The much-hated advisor to Boris Johnson was photographed exiting the building with nothing but a cardboard box.
Boris Johnson's Political Adviser, Dominic Cummings, leaves his house to go to Downing Street.
Photo: Mark Thomas/Alamy Live News

UPDATE: Dominic Cummings has left Number 10 with immediate effect, the BBC reports. He was photographed leaving the building on Friday afternoon carrying a cardboard box.

Dominic Cummings has become an almost unrivalled folk demon in the British liberal imagination. Commonly labelled as the cunning Iago-like figure pulling the strings of Boris Johnson, he is perhaps more widely hated than any actual Conservative politician. This is especially true for ardent Remainers, many of whom view Cummings as the chief architect of Brexit.

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The nation was thrown into a collective spasm of outrage earlier this year, when Cumming broke lockdown rules about non-essential travel to visit Durham, before offering an almost insultingly implausible non-apology. His claim that he visited a nearby beauty spot on his wife’s birthday in order to test his eyesight became the basis of a thousand unfunny Barnard Castle jokes about going to Specsavers.

People have been calling for his resignation for months – there was even been a Led By Donkeys-style grassroots campaign putting up posters attacking him. Up until now, it seemed like these efforts would be ignored. On Friday, however, the BBC reported that Cummings is expected to leave Downing Street before Christmas.

Whether this is a resignation proper or he’s jumping before he’s pushed remains unclear. In fact, the whole thing is pretty ambiguous.

On Thursday, Cummings told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg: “Rumours of me threatening to resign are invented, rumours of me asking others to resign are invented…”

He added that his “position hasn't changed since my January blog”, when he said that he would make himself “redundant” by 2020. So if he is going to resign but he was already planning to… Why is this even news?

Well, it’s partly to do with the overall climate at Downing Street, which has been particularly tempestuous of late. Please pay attention, because this part is very convoluted.

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This week saw perhaps the most tedious political scandal of all time, for which political journalists have been desperately trying to push the term “Chiefgate”. (To paraphrase Regina George: it’s not going to happen.) What this amounts to is that Lee Cain, the chief of communications for Downing Street and a key architect of the Vote Leave campaign, has stepped down.

Cain was apparently offered a chief of staff role, but this offer was blocked when a group of Tory politicians objected to the appointment, along with, for some reason, Boris Johnson’s partner Carrie Symonds.

This story was extremely salacious gossip to, like, seven lobby journalists and of very little interest to anyone else. As Guardian journalist George Monbiot told BBC Politics Live yesterday: “Putting the resignation of a Downing Street advisor as a top headline is political reporting at its worst. it's court gossip masquerading as journalism. And it doesn't make any difference anyway.” Go off, king.

It has been suggested that Cummings has threatened to resign in response to this (they were apparently “allies”) and, although he has denied this, the timing of the announcement suggests it could be related. According to the BBC, a Number 10 insider said that Cummings "jumped because otherwise he would be pushed soon".

A bunch of Labour politicians have already reacted to the news on Twitter. Deputy leader Angela Rayner tweeted: “I have no interest in Dominic Cummings' apparent 'legacy'. In the middle of a pandemic he shattered public trust and undermined lockdown & our fight against Covid. His cross-country road trip, long distance eye test, dishonesty & arrogance was an insult to the British people.”

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Shadow justice secretary David Lammy damningly tweeted: “Like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Dominic Cummings has been one of the most malign influences on the British government in modern history. His legacy is one of bullying, deception, hypocrisy and hubris. The super-forecaster who ignored the pandemic. His damage is irreparable.”

Lots of people are really happy about this and fair enough, get your pleasure where you can in these dark times. But to think that Boris Johnson will suddenly become a better prime minister without Cummings seems optimistic. Back in the 19th century, people pushed the idea of “the great man theory” – a view that posits that history is the result of the choices made by kings or military leaders, rather than being propelled forward by wider social and economic forces.

Those who’ve turned Dominic Cummings into the absolute embodiment of Tory malice have done something similar, although it’s closer to a “terrible man theory”. Placing too much importance on the malign influence of Cummings on Brexit obscures the many material and structural reasons that led to it. It wasn’t just down to one really smart, really evil guy playing tricks.

The way people talk about Cummings also plays into a different trope. He is the “evil chancellor”, the shadowy adviser whispering sweet poison into the King’s ear. You don’t need to look far in history to find examples of this: consider Otto Von Bismarck, Grigori Rasputin, or Jafar from Aladdin. But shaping Cummings into this mould breeds a dangerous complacency. You only need to look at the last hundred years of British history to understand that the Conservative Party doesn’t need a Machiavellian schemer to trick it into being evil.