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This is the second of a two-part discussion with Dominic Cummings, in which he reflects on his time in government – what he got right and what he regrets – and what he believes must change for the country to thrive. In part two, Dominic diagnoses the ‘pre-revolutionary’ mood of British politics, marked by voter
From our UK edition
47 min listen
In this special two-part interview, Michael and Maddie are joined by Dominic Cummings. After starting his political career at the Department of Education, Dominic is best known as the campaign director of Vote Leave, the chief adviser in Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s premiership, and one of the most influential strategists of modern times. Whether
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Dominic Cummings delivered a Pharos Lecture in Oxford this week on why western regimes are in crisis. Here is an edited transcript of his speech: The old political parties, the old Whitehall institutions, the old media, the old universities, the old courts constitute a political regime. This regime has become cancerous. The cancer has metastasised
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Dominic Cummings has released the following statement on his website: The Prime Minister’s new Director of Communications Jack Doyle, at the PM’s request, has made a number of false accusations to the media. 1. Re Dyson. I do have some WhatsApp messages between the PM/Dyson forwarded to me by the PM. I have not found
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Spectator contributors were asked: Which moment from history seems most significant or interesting? Here is Dominic Cummings’s answer: In the early morning of 26 September 1983, Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Union’s Air Defence Force was on duty, monitoring his country’s satellite system, when the siren sounded. His computer indicated that the US had just
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This is a transcript of Dominic Cummings’ statement: Around midnight on Thursday, the twenty sixth of March, I spoke to the prime minister. He told me that he tested positive for Covid. We discussed the national emergency arrangements for No.10, given his isolation and what I would do in No. 10 the next day. The
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Dominic Cummings posted this rather distinctive call for scientists, ‘unusual mathematicians’ and ‘weirdos’ to come work for Number 10 and the Civil Service on his personal blog today. The full job advert is published below: There are many brilliant people in the civil service and politics. Over the past five months the No. 10 political team
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Dear Vote Leave supporters, Let’s honour the referendum result and get Brexit done so the country can move on. Days after the 2016 referendum, I emailed all of you to say thanks for your heroic efforts. I also said — keep an eye on my blog, if Brexit is in danger then I will send
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Watching SW1 these days reminds me of that scene in Citizen Kane when Boss Jim Gettys confronts Orson Welles (Kane): Gettys: ‘You’re making a bigger fool of yourself than I thought you would Mr Kane…With anybody else I’d say what’s going to happen to you would be a lesson to you, only you’re gonna need more than
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Most of Westminster has suffered a psychological and operational implosion because of the referendum. Many MPs, hacks and charlatan-pundits on both sides have responded to the result by retreating to psychologically appealing parallel worlds rather than face reality. A subset of the ERG, for example, welcomed the December agreement on the Irish backstop that actually spelled
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Vote Leave director Dominic Cummings has been warned he could find himself in contempt of parliament for refusing to appear before a select committee on fake news. Here is an edited version of his response to Damian Collins, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee chair: You talk of ‘contempt of Parliament’. You seem unaware
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Dear Tory MPs and donors, I’ve avoided writing about the substance of Brexit and the negotiations since the anniversary last year but a few of you have been in touch recently asking ‘what do you think?’ so… Vote Leave said during the referendum that: 1) promising to use the Article 50 process would be stupid and
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Every day on his way to work at Harvard, Professor Allison wondered how the reconstruction of the bridge over Boston’s Charles River could take years while in China bigger bridges are replaced in days. His book tells the extraordinary story of China’s transformation since Deng abandoned Mao’s catastrophic Stalinism, and considers whether the story will
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Politics is gambling for high stakes with other people’s money… Politics is a job that can be compared with navigation in uncharted waters. One has no idea how the weather or the currents will be or what storms one is in for. In politics, there is the added fact that one is largely dependent on the
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Forecasts have been fundamental to mankind’s journey from a small tribe on the African savannah to a species that can sling objects across the solar system with extreme precision. In physics we have developed models that are extremely accurate across vastly different scales from the sub-atomic to the visible universe. In politics we have bumbled
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A fortnight ago I wrote a blog on the issue of exit plans and a possible second referendum. According to various media reports, Boris liked the idea and has told people so. I thought it would be interesting to see some numbers so asked ICM to consider it. Attached here are the results. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/NRsOr/index.html”] Unsurprisingly,
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In 2001, Tony Blair took Sir Michael Barber from his perch as special adviser in the Department for Education and brought him into Downing Street. Once there Barber set up Blair’s ‘Delivery Unit’ and oversaw his attempts to reform public services. He then moved to the McKinsey consultancy where he cloned his unit for governments
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Simon Jenkins has written a bizarre piece in the Evening Standard. As well as answering that, I’ll explain a few others things about it. Unfortunately, he has completely misunderstood the basics of the universal free school meals fiasco. He writes: ‘Gove decided, by a deal with Nick Clegg, that running every school meant insisting every child have
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Dominic Cummings meets Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize-winner who has the answer to some of the West’s intractable problems. So why won’t politicians listen to him? One day in 1974, at the height of the famine in Bangladesh, an economics teacher from a nearby university wandered into a village called Jobra. There he found the
