‘Gove stuck to the line that it was perfectly normal to visit castles to check you haven’t gone blind’

In this extract from his book, ‘The Cummings Files’, political satirist Arthur Mathews has found diary entries, blog posts and notes to self that offer ‘valuable’ insight into Dominic Cummings’s brain

(Arthur Mathews/Faber and Faber)

The Tory Party grass-roots, all of whom are over 75, don’t like the idea of all of them having to die to achieve herd immunity. Do we have another option? Called in Boris and Hancock for a brainstorming session. What are the options? I told them: sometimes it’s a good idea to confuse the opposition by coming up with an idea that is IN DIRECT OPPOSITION to one’s previous proposal.

Hancock was a bit perplexed by this, but Boris got it immediately. One minute, completely opposed to Brexit, the next, totally in favour of it. It’s a great way to wrong-foot your opponents. So I decided we should go for the OPPOSITE of herd immunity … which is COMPLETE LOCKDOWN.

Because we need THE SCIENCE behind us, I rang up Neil Ferguson at Imperial to give us his backing. He wasn’t at his desk, and the phone was picked up by a cleaning lady. She said that she wasn’t an epidemiologist (or a scientist of any kind) but she thought that, yes, lockdown seemed like a great idea. I said that there was a possibility that she wouldn’t be able to see any members of her family for at least a year, but she said she was OK with that. Great – we got what we wanted: Imperial backs our lockdown!

24 March 2020

Everyone thinks lockdown is a brilliant idea, and the people are fully behind it. Even leftists love it, because it’s the government telling them what to do. Rather brilliantly, many people have also begun to snitch on their neighbours, immediately ringing up the police if they see a potential troublemaker going for a “second jog” or visiting beauty spots without written permission. Even Nazi Germany wasn’t as compliant as this. I’m so pleased things are going well.

Also, importantly, we have a few more bigwigs to back us on THE SCIENCE. Boris is back from his holidays (yawning – “what’s happening with the Covid-19 thing?”) and I introduced him to a brainy-looking bald man called Chris Whitty, who has a most impressive CV. He is Chief Medical Officer for England (CMO), Chief Medical Adviser to the UK government (CMUK) and Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) at the Department of Health and Social Care. Boris likes having boffins with loads of  letters after their names lined up in front of him taking the flak, so when things go wrong he can blame them.

26 March 2020

Everything is under control and I’m beginning to enjoy this. There are certainly “fun” aspects. For instance, Rees-Mogg and Iain Duncan Smith are playing Scrabble together using only words that have become popular during the crisis, such as hydroxychloroquine and immunosuppressed.

Rather than the three-months-to-a-year lockdown period, I think we can all probably get back to normality within a week.

27 March 2020

They’re dropping like flies! The PM, Hancock, Whitty and Alister Jack (Scotch Sec) all have it. I feel COMPLETELY S*** so I’m presuming I have it too. F***ing hell! This afternoon I panicked a little bit and decided to run away. Unfortunately the press saw me legging it away from Downing Street and took loads of photographs. This probably doesn’t look good – me running away from Downing Street. The people are looking to me to run the country during this crisis and I can’t let them down.

29 March 2020

I like it here. We are staying in a small cottage on dad’s farm. The fields are resplendent with bluebells, and the gentle sounds of the animals and birds in the countryside are delightful to hear when I wake up in the morning. How different from the noise and clamour of London (before lockdown). All this is soothing my Covid-19 symptoms, and it’s sometimes hard to believe there is a war on.

I feel I can run things just as well here as I can in the capital, through the technical wonder that is Zoom. I called a cabinet meeting for midday and I could see them all in their little boxes. Even though their hands are usually out of shot, I know who the fidgeters and doodlers are, so I can still upbraid them if I suspect they’re not paying attention. Boris, like me, is self-isolating at home (although, of course, I am not at home).

At the meeting, there was some discussion about PPE for doctors and nurses. There isn’t enough of it, apparently. I just told Raab to get some more. Raab thought Hancock was in charge of this. Then Hancock said he thought Raab was in charge. I told them to stop squabbling and just order more of the bloomin’ stuff. Jesus, how simple is all this?

I asked if anybody else had any ideas. Rishi Sunak read somewhere that it’s dangerous to touch your face with Covid in the air, as the virus can be on your hands or fingers and could then enter your body through your ears, nose or mouth. ("And anus!" chipped in Grant Shapps.) To counteract this, he thought it might be a good idea for people to wear boxing gloves.

George Eustice wondered if it might be a good idea for people to learn to breathe through the tops of their heads. For f***’s sake.

4 April 2020

Me, wife and child were feeling a bit poorly so we went to the local hospital for a check-up. Turned out we’re all fine, so we went home again. (Home to the farm, that is, not London.) The cottage and mum and dad’s house are close to each other, but well over the recommended ‘social distancing’ two metres apart, so we can chat freely outdoors, even if we have to raise our voices when there is a slight breeze, or shout very loudly if there is a full-force gale.

Had a long Zoom chat with Bojo, now in hospital. He said he felt very ill but, of course, as he admits himself, he could be lying. He was sipping orange juice and wearing his Bullingdon Club blazer over his striped pink-and-white pyjamas. (He was also, rather playfully, wearing a black wig, which one of the nurses had plonked on his head.) He was in a contemplative mood and said this period in British history reminded him of the aftermath of the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in AD 451. He asked if I had ever seen the discussion of this battle between the historians AJP Taylor and Eric Hobsbawm, where they’re both drunk and Taylor ends up hitting Hobsbawm over the head with a mace. (I hadn’t.)

6 April 2020

Boris is dead*. Initial thoughts: I liked him but I never thought he was quite up to the job. This could be very positive . . . Looking back at my diary from last night —

*Correction: Boris is not dead. It was Hancock playing a joke.

He said: “Boris is dead…” in a text but has just followed it up with “… certain that he is going to get us out of this mess!” I don’t think it’s appropriate for Hancock to make jokes like this amid the prospect of 20m deaths from Covid. I think you can make jokes if it’s up to 100,000, but after that it’s not on.

14 April 2020

Back from our break up north and feeling healthier and much refreshed. An unremarkable trip; now looking forward to getting back to work.

5 May 2020

It’s been greatly embarrassing because Ferguson from Imperial, who decided lockdown was the best thing for the country and persuaded Boris that everybody in the UK should “STAY INDOORS AT LEAST FOR A YEAR”, has been breaking the “don’t go anywhere” rule so that he can shag a married woman who he is not married to.  Apparently this lady was trekking across London on an almost daily basis to get some full-on biology lessons from the Coronavirus Casanova. Boris saw nothing wrong with this at all (apart from the breaking lockdown bit). Bojo regards men not getting enough sex as a "health issue".

22 May 2020

I completely forgot that my trip to Durham would break lockdown rules, and now I am at the centre of a MEDIA STORM. It was a simple mistake, but now this complete non-story is all over the press and TV. Just because I was the “architect of lockdown” and it looks like I broke the rules I came up with myself, I am being accused of hypocrisy. Everybody is making a huge fuss about a trip I made with my wife to a castle. The reason for the visit to Barnard Castle was simple. I woke up that morning and I had gone blind. This was quite alarming, but luckily after a few hours I was suddenly able to see again. Realising that I would soon have to go on a long journey back to London, I decided to do a “test drive” to check on my eyesight. Better to go blind on a short drive along a quiet country road than to go blind at 100 miles an hour on the M1.

Luckily, the drive to the castle was uneventful. I didn’t go blind and we just stopped and had a quick look around and then returned to the car.

23 May 2020

As part of the government strategy to defend me, which I have called “OPERATION MEDIA GO F*** YOURSELVES”, Gove had to go face to face with some Sky News/BBC reporters/ Tory haters, who just went on and on about my innocent trip to the castle. G kept to the line that it was perfectly normal to visit castles to check that you haven’t gone blind, and that I hadn’t done anything at all unusual. 

25 May 2020

Everyone is still having a nervous breakdown over this. Hancock shat his pants at yesterday’s cabinet meeting. Boris has been pacing up and down muttering: “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” This really pissed me off. I told him that I wished he had died of Covid-19 a few weeks ago and that he wasn’t fit to be prime minister. Then he started crying, made another reference to an Ancient Greek battle, and went off in a sulk. I had to phone him later. I said I’d hold a press conference. Bojo cheered up a bit at this. But then he got suddenly alarmed: “You’re not going to tell them to go f**k themselves or anything, are you, Dom?”

“Look,” I told him, “they’re a SHOWER OF C****, but they’ll only lay off this shit when they get their pound of flesh.” If they want to confront Cummings face to face, then I’m willing to do that. I have no respect for them so it doesn’t bother me that much. I might say I regret a few things to mollify them, but they know that I won’t really mean anything I’m going to say.

“Maybe you can say it with your fingers crossed behind your back? (It’s so typical Boris would respond like this.)”

“No, Bojo, you stupid f***er. That’s something a child would do. There’s no need for that.”

“Oh, all right then … Where would you like to hold the press conference? How about Wembley Stadium? There’s bound to be a lot of interest!”

( )

It was, again, typical Boris. Loving the grand occasion but not having his eye on the bigger picture. I had to explain to him that the press conference should be limited to two people. This was not a hard sell and he readily went along with this when I also reminded him of the two-metre distancing rule. Then I told him it would be great to hold it in the rose garden behind Downing Street. It’s a nice place, with a very calming atmosphere. It’s also outdoors, so easier to escape from if I absolutely had to. He agreed.

26 May 2020

Did the press conference. No big deal. It went OK. Meanwhile, a joint BBC/Guardian readers’ poll today has named me as the most hated man in the world (of all time).

This is an edited extract from “The Cummings Files: CONFIDENTIAL: Thoughts, Ideas, Actions by Dominic Cummings’, by Arthur Mathews, which is published by Faber (£9.99 hardback)