Cummings once advertised for ‘weirdos and misfits’ to join him – now we see why

No wonder he seems to have fallen out with every single boss he’s ever worked with – severing ties one by one with former party leader Iain Duncan Smith, the Leave campaign and now Johnson himself. He doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere

‘He’s a details man in a world with a short attention span’ (Getty Images)

Independence Day had me hooked. The Westminster version? More so. All seven hours of it.

In the Westminster village, we all got the popcorn and watched... and watched as the prime minister’s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, compared the government’s pandemic handling to a scene from the 1996 blockbuster. The single most devastating claim was this: “Tens of thousands of people died, who didn’t need to die.”

There was plenty of opinion – Boris Johnson being “unfit for the job”, for example – but, crucially, the unsparing detail to back it up. And then there was the appalling picture he painted of a Carry On government, with a prime minister distracted by his girlfriend and his dog, and offering – bizarrely – to get himself injected with Covid, on live TV, to reassure the public.

But Cummings reserved the most damaging allegations for the health secretary, Matt Hancock. His specific itemising of some of the lies he says Hancock told have the potential, if proven, to cost him his job.

We’ve yet to have a point-by-point rebuttal from the health secretary, but we’ll see if revenge is a dish best served cold in the Commons, this morning, when Hancock answers an urgent question from the opposition.

Channel 4 News and other news organisations raised questions repeatedly throughout the pandemic about the failure to test people discharged to care homes, screw-ups over PPE, and a suggestion the government presided over a rationing of treatment. Now, months later, we’ve got the truth. Or have we?

Hancock’s friends call Cummings the DLF – a “disingenuous little f**ker”. Hearing him railing against ministerial “lies” stuck in the craw of many in Westminster, and my hunch is that the public might give him short shrift too. Early polling about his intervention yesterday appears to bear this out.

For many, he lost all moral authority when he took his little trip to Barnard Castle. Few gave him the benefit of the doubt when he said he wanted to test his eyesight – yesterday he said that story was “too bizarre” to be made up. Yet he also confirmed that some of that scepticism was well-placed, as he admitted he hadn’t told the truth about his trips to Durham.

Believable or not, though, yesterday was unprecedented. In nearly 30 years of watching events at Westminster, I can’t think of any other instance of someone once at the heart of government unburdening themselves in this way.

Any one of his extraordinary revelations could have led the news. The assertion Johnson had wanted to “let the bodies pile high” rather than lock the country down again would end most prime ministerial careers. But not, perhaps, this prime minister.

We’ve become inured to eye-popping, scandalous, shocking, you would have thought career-ending moments from Johnson and his top team. We’re still gripped by the drama, but we’re no longer surprised by every twist and turn.

Partly, I think this is positivity bias after more than a year of unrelenting awfulness. People want to hear about things going right, about vaccines giving us the chance to live again. They’ll learn the lessons in unstinting detail when the inquiry does its work.

And partly I think it’s because few are cut from the same cloth as Cummings: obsessively poring over minutiae, data, superforecasting (much good that did him!) and arcane management theories. He’s a details man in a world with a short attention span.

He once advertised for weirdos and misfits to join his not-so-merry band. And that’s just how friend and foe alike describe him.

No wonder he seems to have fallen out with every single boss he’s ever worked with – severing ties one by one with former party leader Iain Duncan Smith, the Leave campaign and now Johnson himself. He doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere; and after yesterday’s tour de force, he’s sealed his reputation as a perpetual loner. What future employer would trust someone who can flex his muscles along with the rest of the team one day, before seemingly straining every sinew to destroy the business the next?

No 10 says it won’t be responding to every allegation or claim. They’ll have to at the independent inquiry, of course. But for now, they’re happy for the public to make up their own minds.

Cathy Newman presents Channel 4 News, weekdays, at 7pm