I think that the first way to understand the rights and wrongs of unelected de facto Prime Minister, Dominic Cummings, is this. Imagine if leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, had done the same. Take a minute or so.

The thing that is a trifle odd about the outrage aimed at Dominic Cummings, is that it is small beer in comparison to his general behaviour. He used all kinds of legal and illegal forms of unethical practice during Brexit, and again as Johnson’s chief advisor. This incident is unlikely to unsettle him.

Career Psychopath

When David Cameron described him as a career psychopath, he wasn’t joking. The way Cummings has smashed through the conservative party to be in all intents and purposes, running the country, doesn’t make him the type of man who will resign on ethical grounds.

Johnson’s cabinet aren’t going to remove him either. They have let him assume enough power to take them down with him. This applies particularly to Johnson, who, I imagine, has enough skeletons in cupboards to fill a graveyard. The only way to get rid of Cummings will be via a backbench coup or the ballot boxes, which don’t open again until 2024.

The British public have fallen for Cummings’s populism. To reverse it will be an arduous task whilst the Tories have a huge majority. Cummings is their man to see that laws will be changed, and boundaries moved, in a bid to protect power. Those (the ones who are not still in utter denial) who voted for it and can now see what kind of horse has bolted, can’t reverse their decision.

Is There Hope?

Is there any hope? Well, some, as Coronavirus was exquisitely timed to expose how useless this government are. Under scrutiny, people’s patience will eventually run thin. There is also a lot of internal division within the party and it does appear to be on the edge of a revolt at times. Johnson is not as well liked as some may think, internally or in the media.

He has been given his opportunity but as we have seen in the right-wing media, his fragile support base is more than capable of turning on him. If Tories see a weak link in their battle to maintain power, they won’t back off. It is a party where loyalty is only skin deep. Johnson himself, is incapable of loyalty, as is Michael Gove.

Most importantly, the opposition must unify and leave internal ideological differences for another day. Keir Starmer has a hat-trick of largely forgotten PMQ’s victories behind him, but he needs to ram them home and keep going. A viable opposition can’t just sit back and let these populists blow their own feet off. That’s simply not enough; they need to be exposed time and again, week after week.

In my opinion, Cummings is, ideologically, a fascist. He wants to smash up the state and create a far right-wing government that is impossible to budge. He barely hides the fact and even employed in his advisory team, a champion of eugenics. What hold he has over Johnson after delivering him his election sealing Brexit, God only knows?

The Flaky Democracy

Populists can maintain power with 35% of the electorate. Whilst they are in power, they change laws to make it harder and harder for the opposition to challenge. They would ban rival parties if they could get away with it. Disturbingly, so would a lot of Johnson’s Dunning-Kruger afflicted support base.

Democracy is looking flaky now, not least because a lot of people don’t appear to want it. Just to think that a huge part of Brexit was driven on by the myth of unelected bureaucrats running the EU. Cummings has never been elected for anything in his life, let alone PM, which he is, in all but name.

Perhaps the British people wanted someone like Oswald Moseley all along? If that is the case, it makes a mockery of all the flag waving to celebrate VE day the other week.

Hypocrisy rules OK….or perhaps I should say UK?