Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and the era of political self-incrimination

Where once the unsayable could be said between leader and adviser and remain untraceable, the constant leak of inconvenient WhatsApps and emails shows nothing now is truly secret, writes Sean O’Grady

Dominic Cummings during his interview on BBC Two on Tuesday (Jeff Overs/BBC/PA )

It is fair to assume that Dominic Cummings’s reputation went before him when Boris Johnson engaged him, twice, as a senior adviser. First on the Leave campaign in the EU referendum of 2016 and once again when he engaged him after becoming prime minister in 2019, Johnson would have been warned of his reputation and unusually strong personality. No doubt the prime minister now understands the full force of the old phrase “mad, bad and dangerous to know”.

What Cummings describes as “trolley government”, alluding to the idea of a broken shopping trolley wobbling all over the place (a metaphor once used by Johnson to refer to himself), appals him. This former very special adviser is determined that the public should understand how the country is being run, what went wrong and why with the response to the pandemic, and, naturally, defend his own mixed reputation. Some might think revenge a motive, and don’t trust Cummings after the Barnard Castle affair, though that doesn’t necessarily mean what he says now is wrong or untruthful.

What the leaked WhatsApp messages also show is that it is increasingly difficult in our constantly surveilled digital age to keep many secrets – as Matt Hancock might readily attest. Where once cabals of ministers and advisers might sit around on sofas thinking the unthinkable and saying the unsayable with no officials present and no record being taken, now almost everything can and is communicated digitally, and many will say that an email can never be truly deleted in the way an inconvenient memo could be shredded. Back in the days of New Labour, the pioneers of “sofa government”, the Post-It note was the instrument by which ministers would evade official or historical scrutiny, the little yellow stickies falling all too easily from important documents and into the waste paper basket.

The 30-year rule (since relaxed) protected minsters, advisers and the civil service from scrutiny until the controversies of the day, and/or the personalities concerned, were dead and buried. Now, though, private messaging services, such as WhatsApp, emails and virtually any digital communication, can be tracked and traced, and mighty search and AI can ferret out truths previously obscure. Attempts to use private email accounts to bypass civil servants are also prone to fail. The larger the group, the greater the risk that unguarded thoughts will find their way into the public domain. Thus the Tory MP Natalie Elphicke recently had cause to regret sharing on WhatsApp her “private” opinion that read: “They lost – would it be ungenerous to suggest Rashford should have spent more time perfecting his game and less time playing politics.” A welter of electronic messages (some public on social media where once they might have been deniably made in some physical meeting) also provided a rich source of evidence for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission when it delved into Labour’s problem with antisemitism.

All parties and governments find openness and transparency something of a challenge, as the euphemism goes. Tony Blair once said, in a fitting outbreak of frankness, that the Freedom of Information Act 2000 was one of his greatest mistakes in office, and called himself a “nincompoop” for putting it on the statute book. The Johnson government shares that view, and the shadowy unit in the Cabinet Office that vets FOI requests, particularly from the media, is itself the subject of a parliamentary investigation. It is peculiarly unwilling to share data on, for example, the appointment of people to quangos and departmental boards, aspects of the response to Covid, and ministers’ outside interests – which makes what may turn into a tsunami of leaks from Cummings all the more remarkable.

The tendency towards secrecy is long-standing and still that culture permeates Whitehall, though the actions of individuals can break the conventions. Fifty years ago there were court actions to try to prevent the publication of the diaries of Richard Crossman, a gossipy member of Harold Wilson’s cabinet, recently removed from office. There was similar disquiet about various other memoirs and diaries when they were thought to be especially juicy or score-settling, especially if they’d only recently left office – such as the diaries of Tony Benn and Alastair Campbell, and Margaret Thatcher’s account of her downfall (“treachery with a smile on its face”).

But a devastating release of bulk information revealing how a political leader could be even more venal, profane and plain crooked than even his enemies alleged? We’d probably have to cross an ocean and go back to the Watergate tapes and subsequent scandal to find a close parallel with what Cummings may be about to dump on the prime minister’s head. A plea by Johnson’s allies that he was only thinking aloud about letting the bodies pile high and culling the over-80s may not be enough to harm his reputation. No doubt, as we say in journalism, “more follows”.