What we are seeing with the imminent departure of Lee Cain from Downing Street surely signals the beginning of the end for the notion that the creative vision of a single person can utterly dominate the output of a government. That single person, by the way, is not Communications Director Cain, nor even Boris Johnson, but Dominic Cummings. For this is largely a proxy war. The proposed elevation of Cain to the post of the PM’s Chief of Staff was only partly opposed because he was widely seen as lacking the authority and weight required for that position.
The main reason for the clamour against him among senior Tories is that he was regarded as the longest-term and most reliable ally of Cummings, in whose slipstream he had risen much further than was ever thought likely back when he was chasing after politicians while dressed as a chicken.
Had Cain become Chief of Staff then the grip of Cummings would have been further tightened, leaving him free to advance his own pet projects and consign those of others – up to and including Cabinet ministers – to waste paper baskets all over Whitehall.
Cummings has already survived several attempts by Tory parliamentarians to force him out – most memorably during the furore over his long drive to Durham – and is a very long way from being sacked by the Prime Minister.
But that’s not really the point. The point is that in politics there are three main personality types. The first is formed of those who enjoy or at least easily tolerate the compromises inherent in collective decision-making.
The second is formed of those who know they are bluffing and out of their depth and who will generally wish to be seen to back the thinking of whoever is the dominant force in the land in order to protect their own positions.
The third is made up of iconoclasts who are so motivated by a singularity of vision that they find the intervention of others tolerable only so long as those others buy entirely into that vision.
So long as he is permitted to give the final thumbs up or down to what is being proposed, Boris Johnson is naturally a type one. Cain is widely regarded, perhaps a little unfairly, as a type two. Dominic Cummings is most certainly a type three.
He wants the House of Lords moved to York, the Cabinet radically slimmed down and the entire Whitehall machine rebuilt according to new first principles. The likelihood of any of these things actually happening is now vanishingly small as the epic battle against coronavirus has sunk all other governmental enterprises into gloop.
All bar one, that is. That one is the enterprise that drew Cummings into the heart of government in the first place – the chance to ensure that Brexit happens in substance and really does conclude with the nation state taking back control.
It cannot be a coincidence that despite all the reports of feuding and loathing in Downing Street, Cain will not actually leave his current post until the New Year. That is when the post-Brexit transition period will end and when Britain will move beyond the control of the EU.
If Cummings understands on which side his bread is buttered then he will choose that moment to seek out pastures new himself too. For on the other side of it lies a land of committees and compromises, of massaging egos and suffering fools gladly, of making backbenchers and non-entities feel valued and no doubt seeing Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid back at the Cabinet table. It is rather an understatement to observe that this is not his natural game.
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