Could the ‘Cummings Effect’ hamper efforts to tackle a second coronavirus wave?

Very few figures in public life have an “effect” named after them, though many might wish to be so honoured. In the case of the prime minister’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings, however, the arrival of the “Cummings Effect”, as a properly defined and researched phenomenon in social science, is hardly something to celebrate, even with the kind of dark humour that keeps people going in a crisis.

Published in no less a journal than The Lancet, the study of the Cummings Effect involved more than 220,000 survey results from more than 40,000 individuals between 24 April and 11 June. The sum was to measure the negative impact of the news that Cummings had travelled around 300 miles with his wife (who had suspected Covid-19) and child during lockdown.

The researchers found a clear decrease in confidence starting on 22 May (when the story came out, based on local sightings of the distinctive Cummings. Public support for compliance with lockdown continued to subside in the period when Downing Street tried to play down the story. It led news bulletins for days and dominated social media.

It also made Cummings a household name. Like the scrapes involving Peter Mandelson in the early years of the Blair government, it transformed the profile of a personality well known in Westminster but fairly obscure to the public into someone who personified a certain style of politics. Yet no one much spoke of the “Mandelson Effect”, and it made much less impact on the government’s popularity. As is clear from the opinion polling, the Cummings Effect probably contributed to a decline in the standing of the government and the approval ratings enjoyed by the prime minister, who expended much political capital protecting his aide.

Although, as with all social science, there is no “control sample” – a parallel universe where Cummings didn’t go to County Durham – the evidence does point to an erosion of confidence and compliance at that particular juncture that cannot be assigned to lockdown fatigue or other factors. With some of the protests, beach parties and other gatherings in the weeks after it could be seen that some people’s behaviour was observably changing, as opposed to them just saying that their behaviour would change. Alternatively, some might have simply been seeking an excuse for what they were going to do anyway – but the suddenness of the effect does suggest it was real. The head of the North Wales Police said it led to “irresponsible actions”.

The point, of course, is the Cummings Effect may now impede efforts to stop the virus spreading, with less compliance on social distancing, meetings with friends and family, travel quarantine and tracing contacts. That in turn makes a second Covid wave both more likely to occur and more difficult to constrain.

In the words of the lead author of the study, Daisy Fancourt (UCL Epidemiology and Health Care): “Throughout lockdown it has been shown how closely public confidence is related to government announcements on Covid-19, with an initial boost as the lockdown came in, followed by a drop after 10 May as the government announced it would begin to reopen society. The data then shows a stabilisation and even a slight increase in public confidence in the fortnight following, but the Cummings events were followed by another sudden decrease.

Anecdotally the Cummings Effect was recognised before the people with questionnaires and spreadsheets got involved, and has entered the vernacular. A mug is available online with a popular definition of the Cummings Effect: “The Cummings Effect is when someone does something fucking stupid and then a load of stupid people do the same thing justifying it because someone in power has done it”.

Politically it was “a moment”, an episode that caused and marked a step change in public opinion. It could be likened to the ejection of sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. In a matter of days the devaluation of the pound shattered confidence in the Conservatives’ ability to run the economy, with devastating consequences at the 1997 election – an effect that was sustained for years.

Yet we do not know his long the Cummings Effect will last. Other disastrous events, such as Suez in 1956 or the recession, riots and onset of mass unemployment of the early 1980s, did not prevent those respective Conservative administrations recovering to win landslide victories at the subsequent general election. In other words by 2024 some voters might still detest Cummings, but vote Conservative nonetheless.

How long the public remember and resent Cummings’ behaviour is the unknown factor in all of this. It is possible, too, that a succession of blunders attributed to Cummings could make the Cummings Effect still more lethal to the government’s prospects. For now though the Cummings Effect is scientifically proven to be bad for your political health.