Could Dominic Cummings end Boris Johnson’s political career?

Dominic Cummings is a dangerous man at the best of times. He has no conflicts of interest in his life because, beyond himself, his family and his well-known causes, he has no other vested interests, which is to his credit. He is not, just to stress what should be obvious, a Conservative, still less a Tory, though a frequent fellow traveller. He has fallen out with, now, four Tory leaders. After an unlikely and unhappy brief partnership with Iain Duncan Smith as “director of strategy” 20 years ago, he left, remarking that IDS was “incompetent”, one of Cummings’ less contentious claims. David Cameron regarded Cummings as a “career psychopath” and banished him from Whitehall. In return, Cummings wasn’t impressed by the Etonian bluffer Cameron and, in helping the Leave campaign to win the Brexit referendum in 2016, duly destroyed Cameron’s political career and legacy. When she was home secretary, Theresa May’s advisers, no pussy cats themselves, clashed badly with Cummings and his boss as eduction secretary, Michael Gove, and when she became premier, May predictably kept Cummings well away from government. Boris Johnson, who rehabilitated Cummings as chief adviser, expended much political capital sticking up for him during the row about breaking lockdown last May. Yet, under pressure from others in a factional Downing Street, Johnson finally dismissed his old ally last year. And we all know what they think of one another these days.

Of all the many damaging allegations and counter-allegations thrown around in recent days, the most alarming, for Johnson, is that Cummings has a stash of voice recordings of various official meetings, as well as emails and other documentation – presumably carried away in that large box Cummings was photographed with walking out of Downing Street and into the wilderness. These recordings, like the Watergate tapes, could have a devastating effect once released, because they will prove, incontrovertibly, that things were said and done by the prime minister and others that ought not to have been said or done, and which were denied categorically in the past. Proof, in other words, of systematic lying to public and parliament. We’ve seen nothing yet.

Already, Cummings uses his blog to set the record straight and has given apparently honest evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee about the response to the Covid pandemic – the “smoking ruin” of Matt Hancock’s ministry. Cummings has promised more, much more, to MPs in any number of unlimited sessions to select committees in the coming weeks. He is advocating a full inquiry into the management of the pandemic. He knows where the bodies are buried, because he did the burying. He seems ready to “cough” as newspaper folk say.

So Johnson has crossed him at his peril, and Cummings, because he bears no permanent allegiance to anyone besides family and beliefs, will retaliate as he wishes, no holds barred. He does not seem to the type to be bought off with a CBE or even a KBE, and displays an impressive insouciance towards his future career prospects, though no one would call him poor. He has a sense of acting in the national interest, as he judges fit, and he will pursue that to its logical conclusion.

In November, Cummings will celebrate his 50th birthday. By then he might have finished off another Tory leader. Hardly an old man, he has achieved a great deal, though his ambitions were barely starting to be fulfilled when he left government for the last time, and he has not finished yet. He seems to have the motive, means and opportunity to defenestrate Johnson. Classic Dom.