Mild Rover wrote:
It is Dominic Cummings speech at IPPR in 2014.
Obviously, it is against the rules to post links to video sharing sites - but this has been made available by the Institute of Public Policy Research themselves, so I think I’m sticking to the spirit of the rules by hinting at how you might find it. If this leads to lots of people posting links to copyrighted materials, then, because I suspect Admin value me less as a moderator than Johnson values Cummings as an advisor, I’ll be sacked from my unpaid role. So, everyone, please don’t.
I can’t easily give you a weblink anyway as I have the App on my iPad, and I can’t work out how.
The speech and Q&A is a bit longer than I remembered, but as I say I found it interesting.
If you're searching for this, look for "The Hollow Men" lecture. It is well worth watching. Cummings has some interesting ideas on government and I agree with some of his critique on the civil service and Ministers.
It is also quite amusing to watch his relationship with the Conservative party. Generally the whole route to advancement in Tory circles involves deference, sucking up, going out and defending the indefensible on behalf of someone else. Cummings doesn't bother with any of that, doesn't do any of the party events, he's not even a member, and he's got a job that everybody in CCHQ covets. He derides the Cabinet and he derides suck ups, and he will find it hilarious that they are all now making themselves look stupid to cover up for him. He doesn't give a poop about their reputations or if the Conservative party suffers lasting damage from stuff he does. He is focused on himself and his projects. At some point he'll leave No.10 and move in to a private sector project and he won't care if the Tories lose the next election. It's not his problem. A few Tory MPs seem to have realised this - he uses the Conservative party (and now the government) for his purposes and doesn't care what damage he causes, and really they should ditch him.
I was thinking about what would have happened if Corbyn had been PM and Seumus Milne had done this. You would have had some of the same issues. They have that 'solidarity' thing on the left. Corbyn would not have been bullied by the press into sacking Milne. Burgon, Gardiner would be making fools of themselves on TV making excuses for him.
The big difference would have been, that if Milne thought his ongoing presence would jeopardise the 'Corbyn project', he would have resigned. He could have stuck around in the background for a while, waited for the moment later on when Corbyn could bring him back in to a different role. In politics, sackings/resignations are rarely permanent, Cummings knows that, so do Priti Patel, Gavin Williamson etc. Milne would have gone because he'd have prized 'the project' above himself. Cummings only values himself, and he will have got his kicks out of 'getting one over' the media, and if that comes at political cost to Boris and his government, he won't lose sleep over it.
