The departure of Cummings is a chance for the government to reinvent itself

A coincidence, maybe, but the simultaneous disintegration of the Trump administration in the White House and the Johnson “team” in Downing Street is a remarkable phenomenon. Only a few months ago, these propellants of the radical populist wave of 2016 looked to have the 2020s ahead of them in which to extend their project, such as it is.

The parallels can be pushed further. In America, Steve Bannon, the architect of Trumpism, has long since left the White House, and faces charges that he defrauded donors to a crowdsourcing fund for the wall on the US-Mexico border. Now Boris Johnson’s Svengali, Dominic Cummings, the brain behind Brexit and the Tories’ election victory, has left government, his plan having been to transform the venerable Cabinet Office into a Nasa-style mission control. 

Soon President Trump himself will be gone. How long will the prime minister last? The high watermark of populist nationalism has certainly passed, and the previous election victories of Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, though messy and far from emphatic, presaged the beginning of the end for popular nationalism among the advanced democracies. The west will, after all, not slide into the authoritarian model of Russia, Turkey, or China, where democracy is, at best, attenuated. The remarkable rise of Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand suggests that niceness might even become trendy. The broader lesson would seem to be that populism might be a great way to win power, but a poor way to govern.

At least America now has some idea of where it is going, albeit with a president probably facing a hostile Senate. The hope for Britain is that the Conservative government can press the reset button, either with or without Mr Johnson. The odds seem against Mr Johnson. More than anyone else, Mr Johnson is associated with, and responsible for, Brexit, the father of this misbegotten adventure. It is a troublesome child, and it will prove a disaster when it is finally “done” in January. 

Even with a thin free trade deal, the best that can be managed now, the hit to exports, jobs and the economy will be severe. Added to the strain of Covid-19, the short and longer-term prospects for living standards look grim. It is difficult to see why businesses should invest in Britain as its major markets, at home and abroad, stagnate or decline. Without investment, there will be little if any growth in productivity, and without that there is no prospect of better wages and properly funded public services. 

Even if Mr Johnson follows Mr Cummings, Lee Cain, and other alumni of Vote Leave, out of Downing Street, he will leave his successor a miserable legacy. As prime minister he also has to carry the can for the misjudgments and mistakes made by his government during the Covid crisis. Lives were always going to be lost in this pandemic, and they have been across the world; but the failures of the British government left casualty rates higher than they should have been. Mr Johnson, and Mr Cummings too, have to be held accountable for that.

If only post-Brexit and post-Covid-19 Britain could be as easy to fix as pressing the reset button on a laptop. Or, for that matter, ditching a few misfits and weirdos from No 10. It needs fresh leadership and a fresh approach, as does the continuing coronavirus crisis. It is perfectly possible that the operation in Downing Street will actually become more chaotic without Mr Cummings giving the prime minister some idea about what the mission of his government is supposed to be.

Things could get worse.