Five Questions About… Dominic Cummings' Deranged Election Blog

Whomst among us who hasn’t dabbled in a blog? If you’re a man, you will have probably spent your 20s referring to it as “essentially a column for the Guardian”. It might have been on cupcakes or your child or Thoughts on Zizek, Temporality and the Kardashians. You'd work on it every night, cigarette in hand, until a girl you dated shared a screenshot with her friends of it with a laugh-crying emoji, so you deleted it in rage at 4 AM muttering that “they’re too stupid to fucking get it anyway what the fuck”. Because, reluctantly, you understand that it’s 2019 and no one cares about your thoughts on the dialectics of Kourtney's lip fillers.

Unless, of course, you’re Dominic Cummings. On Wednesday, the Conservative Party advisor and Vote Leave director published a new blog post in the form of a “BATSIGNAL!! [sic]” to Brexiteers. Bringing that reliable, Brexiteer-uncle energy (read: many capital letters), the blog warns readers of what could happen if they don’t vote Conservative, encourages them to “tell family and friends face-to-face” to vote for Johnson, and that “we’ll all get screwed on taxes, Parliament will drag the whole country into crisis, and immigration will return to being a central issue in politics instead of being marginalised by Brexit…” Blah blah blah, immigrants are bad, Brexit is good, etc.

For an official political advisor like Cummings, it’s pretty, what’s the technical term: hoo ha? Nutty? Off ya rocket? Speaking from an editorial perspective here, there is heavy use of bold formatting and capital letters, lots of ellipsis and rhetorical questions, as well as killer lines like, “I’ve looked VERY carefully at the numbers”, with not one but two postscripts. But what else could we expect from an advisor who has been described as “Machiavellian”, who was initially blocked from joining the Cameron team for being too difficult, and who has never held back from leaking inside info to journalists?

Here are some questions we have for the man, the legend, the racist:

Maybe Dominic Cummings is this weird and emotionally unstable all on his own. Maybe the blog’s unhinged anger towards immigrants and the terrified, apocalyptic tone of voice is just a personality trait, honed over years of Conservative party involvement and late nights on Reddit.

Or maybe, Dominic Cumming loves to get lit like we’re leaving the EU tomorrow and it’s the eve of the millennium, while thinking about his love of a hard (wink wink) Brexit. You know, just a little fun to take the edge off a bit and help “think clearer”.

Cummings’ blog has been around a while, so this question is not new, though it is increasingly pertinent. We all know the unbridled joy of just getting “a few thoughts out” on your shitty ex or a 4,000 word “bit” on the GENDERED TECHNOLOGIES OF THE SELF(IE) that no one asked for. But isn't this all a bit 2012 for a political advisor? Wouldn’t the Telegraph fall over themselves to publish unhinged drivel like this? With a few edits, it could be their leader.

Dom – can I call you that? Dom – how did you get to the bat signal thing? I understand that conceptually, Batman is the capitalist hero and billionaire vigilante who fights to supports the establishment, so in that sense it does work. But in terms of trying to appear like a reliable political source, not to mention presumably not wanting to make the Conservative Party seem panicked and weird, perhaps the whole comic-book, man-in-cape thing could have been dropped? I dunno, just feels a little bit infantile for a man who keeps shouting about how much he knows about "THE NUMBERS".

Tough one here! You mention “unlimited immigration from the whole world not just Europe” as a bad thing, which sounds a little… racist, assuming you see Europe as this superior, white, hegemonic mass. Then you link “immigration” to “extremism”, again presuming that immigrants are all just, what, IS fighters who fancy a quick pop at UK citizenship? Rather than what they actually are, which is people who make a net positive contribution to the UK economy, who work as nurses, carers, and doctors with skills desperately needed in our country. Not to mention the anti-Semitic dog-whistles with mention to Philip Hammond working for "Goldman Sachs". You know what actually, don’t answer that. We can work it out ourselves.

As with everything Cummings does – Conservative meddler that he is – we should presume that this isn’t solely the ramblings of an idiot. Cummings knows very well that the concept of “getting Brexit done” is both empty and impossible, but is nonetheless pushing it loud and clear. He’s also probably clocked that Labour has far more on the ground campaigners than the Conservatives, which is why he’s included a lot about meeting people face to face and real, human involvement.

Not to mention that you lose nothing by hedging your bets and making it seem extra vital to turn up for the Conservatives. Even if you’re confident of a majority.

@RubyJLL