Dominic Cummings showed up at the Covid Inquiry dressed in his signature white shirt. Plus, in a nod to formality, he’d added a shoe-string tie , rakishly askew. He was interrogated by Hugo Keith KC, a lawyer with a plausible manner and an expensive tailor. He looked like one of those shiny new MPs with an answer for everything. The kind who switches parties as easily as changing energy suppliers. Keith obviously hoped to make Cummings blush by reading out his famously sarcastic emails. He recited this from the archive.
‘The cabinet’, wrote Cummings, ‘is largely irrelevant to policy or execution… it’s seen by everyone in No 10 as not a place for serious discussion.’
Cummings stuck to his guns on the stand. At the end of 2019, he said, he’d urged Boris to consider ‘radically shrinking the size of the cabinet, back to where it was 100 or so years ago.’
He described cabinet meetings, and cabinet committees, as ‘Potemkin’ operations intended to create the impression that decisions are being made by elected MPs. In reality, meetings are ‘scripted’ and ministers are given sheets of statements ‘with bullet points, written by officials in advance.’
Keith moved to Cummings’s salty language about ministers. He apologised to the court as he recited Cummings’s verdict on senior cabinet members. ‘Useless, fuckpigs, morons, c—s,’ wrote Cummings. These views were shared via email with No. 10 colleagues.
‘Did this contribute to the professional effectiveness on the part of ministers?’ asked Keith. Cummings dodged the question and said he wasn’t alone in disparaging the quality of elected officials. ‘A lot of senior people were dealing with the crisis extremely badly.’
Keith gave him a chance to revise his language. ‘Too trenchant?’
‘No,’ said Cummings, ‘if anything I understated the position.’
Keith probed the decision-making structures of Downing Street. Cummings’s view is that the UK is governed by an unelected secretariat.
‘Most power is nominally in hands of the PM,’ he said, ‘but it is, very largely, in the hands of the cabinet office. I’d say the cabinet secretary is ten times, or a thousand times, more powerful than anyone else in the cabinet, apart from the PM. All sorts of elements of real power in our system are answerable to [the cabinet secretary].’
Cummings’s view is that the UK is governed by an unelected secretariat
He said journalists know all about this. ‘Media coverage is aimed at covering up this fact.’ And he explained why the system can’t be unpicked. The ‘bloated’ Cabinet Office is ‘immune to scrutiny’ and impossible to reform because not even the PM understands how it works.
‘It’s extremely difficult to know, in No. 10, who at the Cabinet Office is doing what.’
For most of 2020, Sir Mark Sedwill oversaw this Byzantine structure and Cummings’s attitude towards him is hard to pin down. He praised his abilities but some of his messages expressed frustration. ‘He’s off the pace and … unable to function.’
Keith accused Cummings of ‘dropping poison on your master’s ear’ in an attempt to get Sedwill fired. Cummings didn’t confirm this but he blamed Boris for botching the whole affair. Sedwill was informed in May 2020 that he had to resign but he was allowed to keep his job until September.
‘That set off a bomb. And I begged the PM not to do it.’
Cumming’s attitude to Sedwill’s deputy, Helen McNamara, is easier to read. He referred to her as a ‘c—’, and he said he was fed up with ‘dodging stilettoes’ from her. ‘I’ll personally handcuff her and escort her from the building,’ he said in one outburst.
Keith accused Cummings of misgyny. Not at all, he countered. He claimed that his attacks on men were equally foul-mouthed.
‘I got on well with Helena at a personal level,’ he said. However, in his final words to the Inquiry today, he abruptly changed tack. As the judge, Dame Heather-Hallett, closed the proceedings Cummings cried out like a penitent sinner.
‘I apologise again for my terrible language!’
A bit late now.
Comments