Dominic Cummings & the Decline of Democracy

Did you offer to resign?
I did not.
Did you consider resigning?
I never considered it.

Under enormous pressure from the public, the media and politicians, Dominic Cummings did not consider resigning.

The most powerful and influential man in the country is unelected.

I would argue that that alone is evidence of a decline in democracy, or even its death.

How did he get to this position? Through illegal tactics. This is not hyperbole or speculation.

He masterminded the Leave campaign and broke the law when he did so. He has faced no consequences to this; he has, in fact, so far been rewarded. We cannot know whether Leave would have won otherwise, and this is the cruel beauty of this tactic. To suggest the outcome should be revoked is itself seen as a threat to democracy. The damage is done. Politicians who are against leaving, but who believe in the power of democracy, who first said that the outcome should be adhered to, and then changed their minds when the campaign was revealed to be criminal, are themselves regarded as corrupt.

He was found to have been in contempt of parliament. And yet he was still chosen as a special advisor.

Many expressed their fear when this happened, recognising the threat - and what it meant that the government was willing to do this -though I am only now aware of this.

He then masterminded the general election, again through tactics for which the party has been rewarded handsomely. Facebook adverts were found to have made false promises. As with the Leave campaign, to query the outcome would itself be regarded as a threat to democracy. The result also reinforced the outcome of the Leave vote and arguably provides support for the idea that people would have voted Leave even without illegal tactics being used. Again, there is a cruel tactical beauty to this. In my view, Cummings is very skilled at using public emotion and sentiment to the advantage of whatever he turns his hand to. He also came up with the slogans used in both campaigns: tapping into what he intuited would hit home.

More worryingly - and this is what I mean in the introduction by being provocative and not resting on assumptions such as - Cummings rushed through a new tech deal right before the election. Why was this necessary - efficiency? Let's hope so.

What else is all this this than corruption?

There are also, apparently, no limits to how far - or how low - Cummings is willing to go to scare and silence individuals. For example, he released information on his blog which outed Sanni - the gay, Pakistani man who had blown the whistle on the Leave overspending - who is from a country where being gay can mean you are shot. This information suggested that Sanni's judgment had been affected by a personal relationship he was in, and while it was soon deleted, the damage had already been done.

It was reported that he had described a possible government approach to the pandemic as - herd immunity, let a few old people die. The government denied this, and Cummings himself remained an unknown figure to much of the public. But what if he did say it? Do we still assume that nobody could be so devoid of morals?