Dominic Cummings is not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy

The interview with the prime minister’s former aide was gaslighting on a national scale, and underlined how desperate a character he really is, writes Salma Shah

‘Dominic Cummings repeating things that cannot be verified or checked’ (BBC)

Former government weirdo in chief, Dominic Cummings is constantly evolving, no doubt to stay fresh and ahead of the curve to prepare for his next Dr Who-style regeneration. In this latest incarnation, he has taken a leaf from the Sussex playbook, by speaking “his truth” to a respected and shrewd interviewer, dropping incredible revelations like, Boris Johnson is a bit chaotic and lots of people in government really didn’t like poor old Dom. Dynamite it was not.

The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg was clearly not in a mood to be trifled with, her power snakeskin jacket an early indication of the danger ahead for Cummings. For those who don’t have the time to spare to watch a gratuitous hour of self-indulgence, here is the summary; his arrogance and delusion were jaw-dropping, talking about himself in terms that suggest he is some kind of sinister Svengali, so no change there.

Time and time again Kunnesberg asked, incredulously, whether he could hear himself when he talked about “getting rid of the PM” with his cabal of vote leavers, immediately after the hugely successful 2019 general election. Naturally, Cummings is above the trifles of mere mortals. It is just a matter of “politics” in his view to decide if elected representatives deserve their positions and privileged roles such as his, and the heart of government should have terms dictated by him, underlining clearly, he can’t hear himself.

Between his smirks around his many referendum campaign sleights of hand, he described the government and the PM in particular as a tragicomedy, reinforcing his belief that only he and his acolytes have judgment enough not to appoint “clowns”. The absence of any self-awareness is really the tragicomedy here. The constant references to “we had decided the PM needed to be replaced” sounded like a teenage boy, imagining himself to be heading a secret society, perhaps even believing in the very serious and grave threat posed by the Illuminati and the Freemasons.

It’s gaslighting on a national scale. Repeating things that cannot be verified or checked, making declarations about people’s motivations without the balance of hearing other people’s version of events, recollections you see, will vary. His claim that not a single person in the NHS challenged the NHS orthodoxy on case numbers and projected deaths in March. How can that be when many scientists were warning about the dangers of the flu from Wuhan in January? It just doesn’t stack up.

The bigger mystery of course is the status of the Cabinet. Why wasn’t anyone challenging the PM on the processes and decisions being taken in his name? The seals of office gives them the right to speak truth to power. It’s a damning indictment of politics today that supposed big beasts are cowed by advisers who are driven, as Dom was, by his own agenda and glorification, not that of the government as a whole. Is this why we’ve started to look to footballers for leadership instead?

What makes many of us angrier still is that we wanted to believe Dom was different. That his dedicated vision and intolerance of incompetence was a project we could all get behind. He made many believe that he had the energy we needed to drive the big reforms in defence, intelligence, science and government.

In some quarters he was treated with messianic zeal, but he’s just the same as those he claims to despise, dressed up as some kind of disruptive entity and man of the people that defies convention. His interview just underlined how desperate a character he is and how much we’ve all paid for his dysfunction.

Salma Shah was special adviser to Sajid Javid, from 2018 to 2019. She was also a special adviser at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport