Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O’Flynn

Why the Dominic Cummings row won’t harm Boris

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The idea of short-termism being a disease that especially afflicts the British economy is a recurring theme. We are regularly told that UK investors are too often looking for a quick buck unlike in, for example, Germany where they take a longer-term strategic view. Less attention is paid to the idea that this condition has wormed its way into other parts of our national life, specifically politics. People who should know better – practitioners and commentators alike – have decided that l’affaire Cummings has changed significantly the basic political facts of life. They’re wrong, at least in the long term.

Tim Montgomerie believes this row means that Keir Starmer has the Conservatives exactly where he wants them – damned as the party of the rich and the privileged. ‘Senior backbencher’ Simon Hoare (are there any junior ones?) pronounces on the Today programme that it has led to support for the Government fading away. Sky News political editor Beth Rigby claims in her latest blog that the PM’s stature has been diminished, that he has ‘burnt through a lot of political capital’ and that he has ‘paid a very heavy price’ for keeping his chief adviser. But is this really the case? Will we remember this row in a few months’ time, let alone come the next election?

It all reminds me of the first resignation of Peter Mandelson. That, too, came relatively early in the term of an administration elected with a landslide majority. December 1998, to be precise. Mandelson, the erstwhile Svengali adviser to Tony Blair, had been launched into a ministerial career in his own right. It then emerged that he had taken a secret loan from another Labour MP and Government minister to enable him to purchase a property.

After a few frantic days attempting to save him, Blair chucked him overboard (only to bring him back some time later; wash, rinse, repeat).

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