Cummings’s appointment means Johnson’s government is not one nation conservative but Tory Maoist
Cummings represents a new breed of Tories; one that does not care about tradition and typical conservative values.
Focusing on the appointments of Priti Patel and Dominic Raab, many have described the new Conservative government as the most right-wing in history. My view is that the most telling sign of this government’s agenda is the appointment of Dominic Cummings as a special adviser.
Cummings represents a new breed of Tories; one that does not care about tradition and typical conservative values such as hierarchy and flaws in the human condition. Instead, the focus is on a radical revolutionary change of a Maoist type.
Some believe the most worrying thing about Cummings is that he is currently being held in contempt of Parliament due to his refusal to attend select committee hearings investigating Vote Leave’s overspending. The real fear should be based on his past record.
Cummings was the chief of staff to Michael Gove when he was Education Secretary, pushing through rafts of policies designed to make the curriculum and exams more vigorous and tough. The rapid change in direction in the department of education was the most radical of any government in recent times, with a more libertarian agenda imposed. This also included the rise of free schools and academies.
This massive upheaval of education policy – with attempts to abolish GCSEs and create an O Level style system, as well as to rewrite the history curriculum towards pro-empire sentiment – alienated a lot of the education establishment. Cummings saw the education establishment (Trade Unions; Local Authorities; and University departments) as the ‘blob’ that was wrongly fighting against his reforms. He branded such bodies as ‘Marxist’ and resisted trade unions that passed votes of no confidence in Gove.
Later, Cummings’ was the campaign chief of Vote Leave. In this position he demonised those who supported remain in the EU as ‘the establishment’ who were not on the side of ‘the people’. He attacked ‘experts’ in the Treasury and Bank of England for supporting remain and discredited the facts and statistics which highlighted the dangers of Brexit. His victory in the referendum led to a political and economic crisis, with a vacuum of power also following Cameron’s resignation.
Cummings’ support of Maoist creative destructionism, which is the belief a new world is created from destroying the old, should give us a lot to fear now he occupies a position in the government.
So, what will Cummings’s role be in Downing Street? He desires to tear up the civil service in its current structure and to break up the treasury, which he believes is thwarting the kind of no deal Brexit he wants to implement. With Michael Gove as Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster (meaning he will oversee no deal preparations across government) Cummings will be united with his old boss who shares his contempt for the machinery of government. He believes this is designed to resist, not implement, policies.
The appointment of Cummings should scare us all, in that this is the most radical, revolutionary right-wing government potentially in the UK’s history.
