Yesterday I wrote here that the shenanigans of special advisers weren’t very important and shouldn’t get so much attention. And then Dominic Cummings resigned, and the world shifted on its axis, so what sort of idiot am I, eh?
It’s important that when journalists get things wrong, they say so. But this isn’t a mea culpa. I stand by my point about the importance of political advisers being overstated and over-reported. Dominic Cummings doesn’t really matter. Boris Johnson does.
There is talk in many papers and places this morning about the impact of Cummings’s departure from No. 10. Will it lead to a change in approach, a shift in policy focus from the centre? Will we see the re-emergence of the liberal Boris Johnson who was mayor of London and embraced open, cosmopolitan politics?
I am yet to hear any account of an actual policy choice at stake in the Cummings row: his departure is a sandwich without a filling
This is the ‘Let Bartlet be Bartlet’ act of the traditional drama about No. 10 advisers, where people talk about the idea that the Prime Minister, freed of the influence of evil counsellors, will now be governed by the angels of his/her better nature and do more of the things they want to happen.
Now, I should declare an interest here: I quite liked the old liberal Boris, who was my Telegraph colleague as well as mayor. That Boris used to talk about the merits of immigration and Britain as a happy, open country in a way that’s hard to reconcile with the approach he’s taken in the last year or so.
So I quite like the idea of that Boris coming back to the fore: it’s a nice story.
But it’s just that, a story, and one that oversimplifies a complex reality. That reality is that the liberal Boris of 2014 and the Brexit Boris of 2019 are the same person, who chose to take different approaches at different times. Today’s focus on Cummings overstates his influence (or that of any adviser) and occludes the essential point of political analysis: it’s the Prime Minister who decides.
Yes, Dominic Cummings had a lot of authority and influence – but that was because Boris Johnson decided he should. Yes, Dominic Cummings did and said things that some people didn’t like – but those things only mattered because Boris Johnson decided they should. And now Dominic Cummings is leaving. And if the things he wanted to happen are less likely to happen it’s not, ultimately, because of his departure – but because Boris Johnson has decided they should not happen.
The more people talk about Cummings and his agenda, the more they miss the important point here: it’s the PM who decides and who sets the agenda, or fails to. Never mind who said what to whom and why people got or did not get new jobs and titles. All that really matters here is what the PM decides to try to do with his government.
One of the oddities of this latest performance of the traditional Westminster Spad drama is how little policy substance there is to it. Some adviser-rows have real import: Alan Walters’s role in the Thatcher team mattered for British membership of the European Monetary System. Fights between aides to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown helped shape Budgets and decide whether the UK tried to join the Euro. I am yet to hear any account of an actual policy choice at stake in the Cummings row: his departure is a sandwich without a filling.
Advisers aren’t irrelevant. They do matter, but only so far as their masters listen to them, and Boris Johnson has decided to stop listening to Dominic Cummings. So his departure tells us what Boris Johnson doesn’t want. The question is, does the PM know what he does want?
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