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The Dominic Cummings file

I think the cat is out of the bag on Cummings; he's never getting away with this. One way or another he's screwed. The whole thing is of a different order to most of their bullshitting, it's personal for people from all political strands. Fintan O'Toole makes a good argument about this in the Guardian.


It's a fatal blunder. Or at least a serious self-inflicted blow to this administration, and the Tories more widely. Politicians trade on their (usually prentence of) integrity, of being 'on our side'. It's the powerful's old enemy hubris biting them hard.
 
I think the cat is out of the bag on Cummings; he's never getting away with this. One way or another he's screwed. The whole thing is of a different order to most of their bullshitting, it's personal for people from all political strands. Fintan O'Toole makes a good argument about this in the Guardian.


It's a fatal blunder. Or at least a serious self-inflicted blow to this administration, and the Tories more widely. Politicians trade on their (usually prentence of) integrity, of being 'on our side'. It's the powerful's old enemy hubris biting them hard.
That is encouraging yes.
But what is the mechanism by which they will be held to account?
From where does the threat come, not just to Cummings and Johnson, but to the wider project that they are merely the current UK frontmen for?
 
Hmm.

Lied to the Queen.

Illegally shut down parliament to avoid debate
Hides from reporters in fridges.

Refuses to go on TV debates.

Bumboys

Letterboxes

Picaninnies

String of record defeats in parliament

Sacked from numerous jobs for "character flaws"

Gave public money to a mistress

Has an unknown number of children that he won't talk about.

What on earth could Cummings have on him that tops what everyone already knows?

Let's not forget his predecessor-but-one was widely believed to have fucked a dead pig's head in the mouth... and stayed in office.

Sorry, I really don't want to keep this debate going but I am going to point out that the only thing on that list that merits real trouble for him if caught is the public money to a mistress. I know you think you've made a long list there and it's got a lot of likes but really, that's nowhere near anything majorly illegal apart from the one I mentioned. It might be morally reprehensible to fuck a dead pig but it's not illegal.

How about malfeasance, embezzlement, obstruction of justice, abuse of power, drug dealing?

Not for one minute that I'm saying Johnson has committed any of these things. No, of course not. No. Not me.

But it doesn't take much imagination to go further than letterboxes and bum boys.
 
That is encouraging yes.
But what is the mechanism by which they will be held to account?
From where does the threat come, not just to Cummings and Johnson, but to the wider project that they are merely the current UK frontmen for?

I'd have to think hard to give a good answer but I think they are at least going to be hounded and will be hated and laughed at in equal measure. Considering the current situation, it's hard to say what may happen. Whether about the best of it is wind in Labours' sails I don't know.
 
Oh, FFS. :facepalm:


We are back to....

It's like the Cabinet are chained to a mad dog. Whenever it runs off barking somewhere, they're pulled along behind it, insisting this is exactly where they wanted to go on a walk in the first place.
 
Well he doesn't seem to have persuaded anyone:

View attachment 214807
Digging into those a bit on the yougov site, for the 'did he break lockdown' question, the interview has reduced the number of don't knows by a lot - number saying 'no' also went up, from 18 to 20%. The disapproval among the old actually went down a fair bit, although still high. Among the young, disapproval went up a lot. Among tory voters, disapproval went down a bit.

So post-interview, there has been a little bit of tory lining up behind their man, or probably more likely behind Johnson. Not a lot, but a bit.
 
Digging into those a bit on the yougov site, for the 'did he break lockdown' question, the interview has reduced the number of don't knows by a lot - number saying 'no' also went up, from 18 to 20%. The disapproval among the old actually went down a fair bit, although still high. Among the young, disapproval went up a lot. Among tory voters, disapproval went down a bit.

So post-interview, there has been a little bit of tory lining up behind their man, or probably more likely behind Johnson. Not a lot, but a bit.

Or it could just be Tories are older on average than normal people. This is likely to lead to less peer-to-peer, social media news consumption and greater reliance on old school broadcast media.
 
I'd have to think hard to give a good answer but I think they are at least going to be hounded and will be hated and laughed at in equal measure. Considering the current situation, it's hard to say what may happen. Whether about the best of it is wind in Labours' sails I don't know.
Likewise.
Don’t get me wrong, anything which will disrupt, demoralise or further de-legitimise them is to be welcomed.
It is just that the most that can be short term hoped for (and IMHO not currently that likely) would be Cummings slipping out of the limelight with one of these “temporary” resignations the Tories are fond of.
Anything that reduces the indirect influence of Matthew Elliott and his shady backers and dents the Johnson brand with the “apolitical” is to be welcomed though.
 
I doubt many tory voters are especially fond of Cummings but Johnson is their man, he is very popular amongst the rank and file. Johnson going all in on Cummings will mean a lot in that regard.
 
Or it could just be Tories are older on average than normal people. This is likely to lead to less peer-to-peer, social media news consumption and greater reliance on old school broadcast media.
Perhaps. You do have to be wary of such confounding factors, but it is notable to me that among the over-65s, the interview actually may have done Cummings a little (and it is only a little) bit of good. Which is a bit surprising, even if you only watch the BBC and think Laura Kuenssberg is a bit of a liberal leftie, given what he actually said. :D
 
Likewise.
Don’t get me wrong, anything which will disrupt, demoralise or further de-legitimise them is to be welcomed.
It is just that the most that can be short term hoped for (and IMHO not currently that likely) would be Cummings slipping out of the limelight with one of these “temporary” resignations the Tories are fond of.
Anything that reduces the indirect influence of Matthew Elliott and his shady backers and dents the Johnson brand with the “apolitical” is to be welcomed though.

It's too late for that now. If they were going to sideline Cummings and then quietly bring him back then Saturday morning would have been the time to do it, which probably wouldn't have killed the story altogether but would have taken a lot of the momentum out of it. They've invested too much capital in hanging on to him to do it now without doing even more damage.
 
For anyone who missed it, here's Gove laughing at the absurd story he's trying to back up.



And here's someone who looked into the autism tweets. platinumsage was posting it about 4 hours after the first tweet.



Jesus wept - Gove went for the spin then pulled up at the last minute.

Has Tory HQ been spiked with LSD?
 
I think the cat is out of the bag on Cummings; he's never getting away with this. One way or another he's screwed. The whole thing is of a different order to most of their bullshitting, it's personal for people from all political strands. Fintan O'Toole makes a good argument about this in the Guardian.


It's a fatal blunder. Or at least a serious self-inflicted blow to this administration, and the Tories more widely. Politicians trade on their (usually prentence of) integrity, of being 'on our side'. It's the powerful's old enemy hubris biting them hard.

Assuming there is a second spikie, there will be people who lose loved ones or suffer from the even worse economic shock that wiho have been told in advance that suffering was less important than that one man keeping his job. Of course there might not be a second spike in which hurrah for the government, but that's a hell of a red black bet
 
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