(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The departure of Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, accompanied by his acolyte Lee Cain, No. 10’s communications chief, was as self-dramatizing as any Hollywood A-lister’s moment among the flashbulbs. Cummings exited Downing Street bearing a box of his belongings last week after a showdown in Britain’s version of the West Wing.
Even the prime minister’s partner, Carrie Symonds, is said to have had a role in pushing the chief vizier out of his post. In the manner of “Murder on the Orient Express,” plenty of people had reasons for moving against an iconoclastic campaigner-turned-guru.
Ministers, Conservative members of Parliament and senior civil servants who resented Cummings’s pugilistic style are rejoicing. He was really a wartime consigliere: a steely, relentless fighter who brought home victory for Johnson in the 2016 referendum and charted his election victory last December as a crowning glory. Unfortunately, he was spectacularly ill-suited to day-to-day government. With the PM’s tenure showing signs of strain amid criticism of his management of the pandemic, the tolerance for turf wars wore thin.
Johnson, we are promised, will now adopt the more easy style associated with his tenure as mayor of cosmopolitan London — a more recognizably “Tory liberal” approach. There’s talk of a “reset reshuffle” to discard underperforming or grandstanding ministers. According to this reading, the revolutionary foment of the Cummings era is over and a return beckons for traditional Cabinet government, the trusty nostrum of respectable constitutional historians down the ages.
This may, however, be a chimera. Whatever happens in the “post-Dom” era, many of the questions he raised won’t go away. Whether Conservatives like it or not, this is an age of disruption, not the era of placid business as usual.
Since the referendum on Europe in 2016, British politics has been turbulent and angry. So a period of calm looks tempting. But there’s a less comfortable word for cozy Cabinet consensus: drift. That’s a trap, especially for governments already getting long-in-the-tooth. The Tories have been in power since 2010 and through four elections. Cummings can be blamed for many things but what exactly is Johnson’s plan without him?
Just as Charles de Gaulle had “a certain idea” of France, so Cummings had one of Britain; and it wasn’t the same as that of the traditional small-state Conservative right or flag-waving nationalists borrowed from the fringe UKIP party. Both the Brexit referendum and the last election were secured by winning over former Labour voters beyond London and the big cities. Cummings enjoined Johnson to embrace the patriotism (and skepticism about mass immigration) of many working class voters by promising to get Brexit done.
To keep the allegiance of Johnson’s so-called “red wall” constituencies in England’s northern regions and Midlands, Cummings also pledged “a levelling up” agenda to rebalance investment away from the prosperous south.
More broadly, he had a low opinion of the civil service, a judgment confirmed by the stumbling of public-health officials to meet the challenge of the epidemic in its early phase and to align it with better border control — a classic example of state-run siloes. His (botched) revolution in Whitehall alarmed fans of continuity, but Britain’s failings on track-and-trace are hardly an advert for brilliant preparedness by “Rolls-Royce” bureaucrats.
So what does Johnson do now? Rachel Wolf, coauthor of the Conservative election manifesto last year, sees two possible paths, addressing two different constituencies: the “Just About Managing” voter and “Affluent Tories.” The balance between these two sets of interests will shape the Johnson era.
A government that pitches its appeal to the barely managing will need to make costly investments in rundown towns to tackle crime, improve poor public services and upgrade transport links. It would also need to limit migration to doctors, scientists, entrepreneurs and the like. If not, Keir Starmer’s Labour — or a populist party led by the shapeshifting Brexiter Nigel Farage — could chip away at the working-class voters who delivered Johnson’s December election triumph.
Those who favor this direction are worried that Johnson is tilting back toward affluent Tory voters; and that the prime minister, without Cummings, will go globalist. He’ll relax immigration controls, favor big business and stick to lavish foreign aid spending.
So-called one-nation Conservatives deny the dilemma and expect the prime minister to cherry pick policies that appeal to both the strugglers and the comfortable. That might be a better reading of the prime minister’s “have cake and eat it” psychology.
Whatever course, it will demand strategic purpose and direction from the center — something that Johnson hasn’t always provided. As Tony Blair, one of the most skillful politicians in British postwar history, found, winning huge electoral victories isn’t enough. Even in his happier economic times the great departments of state had to be goaded into reform.
Johnson’s weaknesses are well known. He is lazy and often disorganized. As mayor of London, his first year in office was marked by rapid personnel turnover and chaos until he appointed two experienced local Tory politicians to run the administration. One of them, Edward Lister, will temporarily act as his chief of staff after the Cummings removal. The appointment of Allegra Stratton, an experienced TV journalist, to front the Government’s press conferences is intended to promote a less “blokey,” and less tetchy, face.
But patching up the staff rota isn’t the central point: Voters are less interested in these shenanigans than journalists. Until Johnson’s own political product is clear, the central question about his mission still arises. Few can intuit what the hallmarks of his government will be once he’s secured Brexit and muddled through the pandemic. Without something clearer to say, and with Cummings gone from the building, his No. 10 is an empty vessel.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Martin Ivens was editor of the Sunday Times from 2013 to 2020 and was formerly its chief political commentator. He is a director of the Times Newspapers board.
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