Leading Brexiters remind us of the project's closeness to Putin

Embed from Getty Images

The past week has reminded us of the friendly relations between Putin's Russia and some prominent supporters to Brexit.

The i held an interview with Dominic Cummings, not in the basement of his parents's castle or the Tapestry Room of his Islington town house, but in a North London pub.

That interview is behind a paywall, but the Politico report has plenty of detail:

In an interview with the i newspaper, Cummings — who led Britain’s Vote Leave Brexit campaign and spectacularly fell out with Johnson in 2020 — declared that the West “should have never got into the whole stupid situation” and claimed sanctions against Russia have had a greater impact on European politics than in Moscow.

The former adviser was scathing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and comparisons with World War II.

“This is not a replay of 1940 with Zelenskyy as the Churchillian underdog,” he said.

“This whole Ukrainian corrupt mafia state has basically conned us all and we’re all going to get f**ked as a consequence. We are getting f**ked now right?”

Isn't he butch?

Meanwhile, Lord Frost appeared on - and was taken far too seriously by - the One Decision podcast. In the course of his interview he suggested that Russia should be allowed to keep some of its conquests in Ukraine.

The hole in the middle of that Dominic Cummings interview

Dominic Cummings' interview with Suzanne Moore has garnered plenty of attention, but for me the most remarkable thing about it is the hole at its centre.

Do you still think it was right to leave Europe?

A lot of people, especially the centre-Left in London, thought joining the Euro would be a success. Now we know we are best off out of it. When the Euro came under pressure it completely wrecked the Greek economy.

That took the blinkers off for me.

Especially now, when you look at how history worked out, and knowing that Covid was coming, it’s very hard to make the case that things could have been different.

I find Cummings' reasoning bizarre.

Moore asks him about British membership of the European Union and he replies by talking joining the Euro.

But Britain joining the Euro hasn't been a serious prospect for 20 years. Tony Blair was attracted to the idea in the early years of his premiership, but his chancellor Gordon Brown wasn't and the idea went nowhere. Since then it has hardly been mentioned.

And then there is his idea that the coming of Covid showed that Brexit was the right decision.

I suppose this rests on the belief that having shaken off EU Britain was able to race ahead with its vaccination programme. But EU law would not have held us back and, though the percentage of the British population who had been vaccinated was impressive for a while, our performance soon dropped back to the European average.

So no benefit from Brexit there either.

Elsewhere in the interview I see the polishing of the Cummings myth: he is the disruptive outsider who shakes up systems and gets results. Except there is little sign of any results from his time at Downing Street.

And behind it all somewhere is another myth: that public schools and Oxbridge and foster a "brilliance" that must be tapped at the heart of government. The result is that contrarianism is valued over knowledge and competence, with results we see all around us.

Lib Dems, the blue wall and the "Boris Johnson toxicity factor"

Embed from Getty Images

"It was incredibly cringe. We all knew that," says one senior Liberal Democrat. "We all thought, this is awful, but it’s also brilliant. And it worked, right?"

Ailbhe Rea - her Twitter handle is @PronouncedAlva - reveals that the blue wall Ed Davey smashed down with his hammer five days was ordered from Grantham five days before the Chesham and Amersham by-election.

And it did work:

Overnight, the "blue wall" was cemented in the political lexicon to name and amplify an idea that had barely been acknowledged before: that the Conservatives are vulnerable in a lot of their traditional, southern seats, and vulnerable in particular to the Liberal Democrats, who are second to them in 79 of those constituencies. 

Which is encouraging, given that I blogged this back in May:

The idea of a blue wall that may crumble will appeal to the media and a Lib Dem victory in Chesham and Amersham will give that idea more credibility.

And that will gives the Tory government a headache as it is faced with defending its gains in the red wall while keeping its traditional voters in the blue wall happy.

Particularly as there is nothing in Boris Johnson's journalistic or political career to suggest that be believes in levelling up anything.

Rea, who sets a new record for the number of "senior Liberal Democrats" consulted for one article, suggests the danger the Conservatives face is actually that they are too interested in pleasing their new red wall voters:

The Conservatives are, famously, pursuing a "Red Wall" strategy, having courted and now hoping to retain voters in Labour’s traditional heartlands. This has been in the expectation that their own traditional voters will stick with them – and in 2019, they did. But the current Conservative government has little to offer these traditional Tories and much to repel them – such as planning reforms, which were a major factor in the Chesham and Amersham contest. 

"They’re leaving their flank open and we’re coming in and having a big good go," Davey told me during the campaign in Amersham. That’s before you look at the underlying demographic shifts in these seats, the gradual post-Brexit realignment of British politics, and the "Boris Johnson toxicity factor", which senior Liberal Democrats identify as one of the biggest current Conservative vulnerabilities among its traditional voters – a factor they think was masked at the last election because of the similar unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn. 

"There’s no doubt that dislike of Johnson in the seat wasn’t just an overnight thing," says a senior Liberal Democrat. "We were also getting the sense that they didn’t like him before. But they voted Tory before because of Corbyn."

"He was toxic. Maybe former Labour people like him. Maybe former Brexit people do. But a lot of traditional Tories don’t like him," they add. Those traditional voters are less keen on Johnson’s entire approach to politics: the conduct of Brexit, the proroguing of parliament, or what they see as a wider culture of impunity in his top team, exemplified by the Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock scandals. It is a private worry of plenty of Conservative MPs too. 

Maybe they will end up alienating both red and blue walls? That would be fun to watch.

The Joy of Six 1011

"History at Oxford and Cambridge will be fine. The risk is that its study will be focused in institutions which are more commonly the preserve of the middle-class student. That its questions and challenges are less accessible to those on the wrong side of History’s tracks." Sir Keith Burnett explains why universities need the humanities as well as sciences.

James Butler looks at Dominic Cummings' appearance in front of the Commons inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic: "The fantasy of the philosopher-king – or in this case, the scientist-king – is the oldest expression of oligarchical resentment at democracy there is; Parliament has already accorded to the government extensive powers to regulate all social life during the pandemic with minimal scrutiny, powers which are even then often exceeded and unequally applied by the police."

By the late 1980s almost all mature specimens of  Britain's once-iconic elm tree had died as a result of Dutch elm disease. Mark Rowe investigates attempts to reintroduce them.

Did Margaret Thatcher help invent soft-serve ice cream? No, says Daniel Fromson.

"In English villages, vats only exist for drowning people—in beer, in pickling brine, in whiskey, in jam. This is doubly true if the vat was built by 14th century monks." Maureen Johnson offers a guide to not getting murdered in a quaint English village.

Richard Foster reads Pat Nevin's autobiography The Accidental Footballer.

Six of the Best 978

"It’s not clear where the Lib Dems go following Davey’s listening tour. While the credibilist, managerialist approach has won internally for now, it remains to be seen whether this approach will buck the trend and unlock good election results for the party in 2021 and beyond. It seems the divide between credibilists and those who want a values-led approach will remain." William Barter identifies a fault line within the Liberal Democrats.

"A genuine attempt at reforming the 'wiring' of the British state would require taking the kind of systems-approach that Cummings waxes lyrical about and applying it to the entire system of policy design and delivery; looking at the relationships between central and local government as well as the proliferation of non-elected regional bodies and the private sector. This is, of course, conceptually, and practically, much harder than pretending you can solve the problem by hiring a few misfits into Downing Street and setting exams for civil servants." Sam Freedman argues that Dominic Cummings never got to grips with the means needed to deliver his ends.

Antony Blinken, who will be Joe Biden's secretary of state, talks about Russia, Putin and Donald Trump.

Neil Woods, who was himself an undercover detective, on the dangers of the government's new bill on covert intelligence.

"And then there’s I’m Not In Love. I once met a guy who told me when he first heard it … Well, I hoped he was going to say, 'it was the best song ever.' Nope, he said his marriage broke up!" Kevin Godley reminisces with We Are Cult.

TV Cream celebrates the career of Des O'Connor.

Dominic Cummings boosts business in Barnard Castle

Good news from the Evening Express, which refuses to be confined to its Aberdeen beat:

Businesses in Barnard Castle have noted an upturn in visitors as lockdown eased after it was made famous by Dominic Cummings’ controversial family trip.

TV antiques expert David Harper who has a shop in the picturesque market town said local businesses could never have afforded the exposure Barnard Castle received from the affair.

Mr Cummings visited the riverside at Barnard Castle on Easter Saturday after traveling from London to Durham to stay at a property on his parents’ farm when he and his wife fell ill.

The Downing Street adviser said they took a trip to Barnard Castle, where he was spotted by a retired chemistry teacher, as he planned to travel back to London the next day and he wanted to check he could drive safely, particularly as his “eyesight seemed to have been affected by the disease”.

That comment led to many jokes about opticians in the town.

Indeed, brewers BrewDog have sold more than 810,000 cans of their IPA called Barnard Castle Eye Test.

Six of the Best 932

"On 25 April 2020, The Spectator, located in London’s Old Queen Street, just around the corner from CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) in Matthew Parker Street carried a column by its commissioning editor, one Mary Wakefield, wife of Dominic Cummings. In it, she told the touching story of her family’s brush with the deadly coronavirus – save for one now-glaring omission: not even the slightest hint of their now infamous mercy-dash to the North East." Tim Bale examines Cummings, Covid-19 and the British Establishment.

Calum Macleod argues that land reform is central to a green economic recovery in Scotland.

Richard Bentall points out that the effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy has never been proved in a randomised controlled trial.

"Bentham ... argued that consensual sex between men should be decriminalised, on the grounds that the law should only prohibit and punish practices that caused harm overall (and not always then), but that there was no harm in consensual sexual activity. " Philip Schofield (no, not that one) looks at the work of Jeremy Bentham, the 18th-century republican, radical, feminist and gay rights advocate.

Virginia Morell says urban foxes may be domesticating themselves all around us.

"There is no room even for the little box adverts that sometimes provided an inadvertent commentary on the text, such as one offering to cure your inferiority complex next to England’s record against Australia." Backwatersman on the evolution and pleasures of the Playfair Cricket Annual.

Fewer people following lockdown guidance since Dominic Cummings story broke

Fewer people have been following lockdown guidance since the story about Dominic Cummings' excursion to Durham broke.

That is the finding of a survey conducted by academics from De Montfort University in Leicester.

For their research, Professor Edward Cartwright and Dr Jonathan Rose surveyed 1201 people across the UK. The number who admitted they had behaved in ways inconsistent with the government guidance because they did not agree with it had increased from 4 per cent to 9 per cent over the space of the last week.

The researchers say:

"There are two explanations for our findings. It could be that people are more willing to discuss their past breaches of the lockdown or that more people have broken the lockdown in the past week. Either way it will likely undermine attempts to police the restrictions and maintain public support for them. We also found a statistically significant decline in trust for Conservative politicians."

Richard Rorty explains why the Conservatives will not be forgiven

The Conservatives think voters are angry about Dominic Cummings' behaviour. But things are far worse for them than that.

Because voters feel humiliated.

They have made sacrifices. They have put up with not seeing their grandchildren even if they live nearby. They have experienced the trauma of having relatives die alone and unvisited.

The voters made these sacrifices because the government told them to and because they believed everyone was doing the same. We were all in it together.

Now they find that the prime minster's adviser - a spoilt rich kid; a permanent adolescent in a T-shirt who thinks it clever to arrive 30 minutes late at his own press conference - has been ignoring the rules.

And then he offers a ludicrous story in an attempt to excuse his behaviour.

And then cabinet ministers pretend they believe that story is true.

Suddenly the voters feel they have made to look - and feel - fools.

As Richard Rorty said in his Contingency, Irony and Solidarity:

The best way to cause people long-lasting pain is to humiliate them by making the things that seemed most important to them look futile, obsolete, and powerless. 

Consider what happens when a child's precious possessions - the little things around which he weaves fantasies that make him a little different from all other children - are described as "trash," and thrown away. 

Or consider what happens when these possessions are made to look ridiculous alongside the possessions of another, richer, child.

This seems to me exactly right and reminds us that Rorty - uniquely among postmodern philosophers - was a wonderfully lucid writer.

It explains why the Liberal Democrats alienated young voters when they reversed their policy on university tuition fees. They felt they had been had.

And how else did we imagine they would feel?

You can say a freeze on tuition fees was not one of our key pledges, but when Nick Clegg's battle bus arrived in Leicester during the 2010 general election campaign it headed straight for De Montfort University.

The city's voters have not forgotten that. And why should they?

I do not think the behaviour of the Conservatives will be forgotten - or forgiven - either.

Government minister resigns over Dominic Cummings

Embed from Getty Images

Douglas Ross, the minister for Scotland, has resigned from the government over Dominic Cummings' behaviour.

In his resignation statement he says:

"While the intentions may have been well meaning, the reaction to this news shows that Mr Cummings’ interpretation of the government advice was not shared by the vast majority of people who have done as the government asked. 

"I have constituents who didn’t get to say goodbye to loved ones; families who could not mourn together; people who didn’t visit sick relatives because they followed the guidance of the government. I cannot in good faith tell them they were all wrong and one senior adviser to the government was right."

A North Eastern Railway poster for Barnard Castle

Embed from Getty Images

Mingle with the elite at the UK's most happening holiday venue!

Dominic Cummings should remember that Rasputin was murdered by a member of the Bullingdon Club

Rasputin: There was a cat that really was gone

Rasputin was trending on Twitter this morning, apparently because everyone has been comparing Dominic Cummings to him.

Cummings should be careful. Prime ministerial advisers are eminently sackable when the going gets tough.

He should remember that Rasputin was murdered by a member of the Bullingdon Club. Poisoned, shot and drowned, if I recall correctly.

"Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards!"

The rodent-toothed ambition of Boris Johnson and nihilism of Dominic Cummings have laid bare the uselessness of Britain’s constitution.

In a way we should be grateful to them.

For it’s no use having a political system built on gentlemen’s agreements if the participants aren’t gentlemen.

The monarchy and the BBC have proved powerless - just ask the Queen or Andrew Neil. Only John Bercow’s courage and love of the limelight has kept the government in check these past few months and now he has gone,

"Who cares for you?" said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) "You're nothing but a pack of cards!"

It seems that all those Liberals who banged on about the need for a written constitution were right.

The choice we face is Liberalism or barbarism.

Six of the Best 890

Peter Oborne explains how British journalists have become part of the Johnson government’s fake news machine.

"He comes across as motivated by an anarchic curiosity, ready to trash his current political vehicle and possibly to break up Britain just to see whether anything interesting and useful results." James Meek on the strange ideology of Dominic Cummings.

Jennie Rigg has personal experience of the poisoning of Britain's political discourse.

"Posters have already appeared announcing the birth of 'Manc-hattan'. But the truth is we are a long way from that uplifting skyline. This is more like something you’d see on the outer ring road of a third-tier Chinese city." Oliver Wainwright says Manchester has sold its soul for luxury skyscrapers.

Hannah Jane Parkinson suggests the #WagathaChristie affair shows that surveillance is no longer the preserve of the private investigator.

Leicestershire's new opener Hassan Azad has been on a long journey from Karachi via Mansfield and a quidditch injury, reports Yas Rana.

Boris Johnson will destroy the Conservative Party if he doesn't destroy the country first

Embed from Getty Images

I came across two article today which argue that Boris Johnson's adoption of populism may in the long run prove disastrous for the Conservative Party.

On The Conversation, Andy Knott notes how the approach for Johnson's government marks a complete break with traditional Conservatism:

For conservatism, protecting “what is” (in other words, the institutions that have been handed down to us) is a joint project between conservative politicians and the people, their constituents. Together they have been engaged in this project for centuries. 

This means there is a seamless bond between the people and the elite (or establishment, or government, or parliament, or judiciary), which enables them to rule and the people to view the Conservatives as the natural party of government and their proper representatives. 

Populism, in stark contrast, operates by breaking that bond. It decrees that the elite has abandoned the people, and acts against their interests.

Johnson may think he can control the definition of the elite - judges, civil servants urban liberals - but sooner or later the people will notice that he is supported by the super-rich and adopt their own definition.

Once they do he will be finished and the tissue of interests the Conservative Party represents ripped to shreds.

Over to the Guardian, where William Davies argues that this Conservative ideology has long been in decline for 30 years:

There was one force in Britain’s public life that never gave up on the Tories: the press. All those resentments that took the place of conservative ideology – the loathing of multiculturalism, Brussels, Blairism, immigration, and the vast riches being made in London – were given a safe space in the pages of the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Daily Telegraph. 

With their constant attacks on all symptoms of liberal globalisation, these papers provided the incubator for the rage currently sweeping British politics, during the long years when national borders and rural England were out of political fashion.

The result is that those newspapers now have one of their own as prime minister.

And the Conservatives?

The current poll lead feels precarious; 59 per cent of Tory members have already voted for the Brexit party once (in the European parliament elections), and many could well do so in future. The Conservatives are now to the Brexit party what cocaine is to crack: more acceptable in polite company, but ultimately made of the same stuff.

Davies reaches a similar conclusion to Andy Knott:

The forces behind Brexit will need new scapegoats soon – and Johnson, Cummings and the Conservative party could be next in line.

All very encouraging if you wish to see the Tories destroyed, but the worry must be that they will destroy the country before that stage is reached.