Brexit architect, quarantine violator. Who is Dominic Cummings?

On March 27, when the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed the coronavirus, his 48-year-old adviser, Dominique Cummings, received a call from his wife – she was not feeling well. Cummings went home, but then his wife got better, and he returned to the government residence on 10 Downing Street. In the evening of the same day, Cummings and his wife and 4-year-old son got into the car and went to Cummings’ parents in Durham, for 260 miles, – so that if the coronavirus dumps them, relatives will look after the child.

The country has already banned all “optional” movements – introduced by the government, in which Cummings plays a key role.

When the press learned about this, a scandal erupted – members of the government urged to stay at home, but did not consider it necessary to follow this, putting themselves above the rules they introduced for all Britons.

Cummings, who is always in the shadows, was forced to make himself public. He gave a press conference in the garden of the government residence, appearing in familiar informal clothes — a loose shirt and jeans — half an hour late.

The justification of the trip across half the country was that for parents of young children the quarantine regime makes an exception, allowing them to proceed from the interests of the child.

The second part of the accusations was that two weeks later, on April 12, Cummings was seen at the castle, a local attraction, 25 miles from his parents’ house. Cummings said he was trying to check whether the disease affected his vision and whether he could drive, and therefore went around the neighborhood, taking his wife and child. Near the castle, the child needed a toilet, the family got out of the car and spent some time on the street, responsibly not approaching other people – there Cummings and people noticed. It so happened that on April 12, his wife had a birthday.

Cummings was never tested, so it remains unknown if he had a coronavirus.

In response to journalists’ questions, Cummings repeatedly refused to apologize for their actions, saying that they were rational and legal. “Cummings don’t regret,” read the headlines the next morning.

Cummings’s explanations weren’t believed, they were ridiculed on social networks – especially the castle’s eye test. And many people complained that they adhered to government prohibitions in difficult life circumstances, and Johnson’s all-powerful adviser who participated in their adoption did not.

Under pressure from the public, Durham police launched an investigation into the alleged quarantine violation by interviewing a person who saw Cummings. The investigation, however, was short in order to avoid politicization – the violation of quarantine itself is punishable by a small fine.

The opposition and the dozens of current and former deputies of the ruling Conservative Party demanded Cummings ‘resignations; they quoted hundreds of letters from their constituents angry with Cummings’ actions and his unwillingness to admit that he was wrong. In protest, one of the government ministers resigned.

Johnson and other ministers defended the adviser, Johnson said that he finds the explanation for the trip to the castle convincing – he, they say, also spoiled his eyesight after an illness. Health Minister Matt Hancock promised to review quarantine fines for families with small children – and this provoked new outrage that the rules were being revised for the sake of trying to shield Cummings. Attorney General Suella Braverman, who supported Cummings, was urged to leave – she oversees the position of the police investigating the adviser, and therefore must remain neutral.

Cummings proponents claim that this is all the revenge of Brexit’s opponents to the man who has done incredible amounts for him.

The other side says that Johnson, who refuses to dismiss the adviser, is afraid to be left without his main ideologist – despite the fact that the current government is apparently leading a tough Brexit on December 31, 2020 – under the veil of an economic crisis caused by the pandemic.

However, now Johnson – having won a triumphal election victory and received additional support from the people at the beginning of the epidemic (when people rallied around the authorities), as well as a wave of sympathy when he himself became ill and suffered a coronavirus infection – discovered that the architect of his victories turns into a possible the reason for the impending defeat.

Surveys show that more than two-thirds of Britons believe that Cummings has violated the rules, and almost 60 percent support his resignation.

It is alleged that Johnson’s popularity in recent days has fallen by 5 points – up to 37 percent (and the popularity of opposition leader Labor Cyrus Starmer has grown by 7 – to 35).

According to another survey, the assessment of the prime minister and the government collapsed by 15-20 percent, and now more people do not approve of it than they approve.

Who is Cummings and why is he so influential

In the movie Brexit. Civil War, Benedict Cumberbatch played Cummins, the “gray cardinal,” a non-standard-minded person who wins the campaign using non-standard methods.

In January 2020, after Johnson’s triumphant election victory, paving the way for Brexit and the reorganization of Britain, Cummings posted on his blog a call for “weirdos and misfits” – strange people who don’t fit into the standard framework – to send him a resume for working in the government. He is looking for data researchers and computer programmers, economists and managers who are able to discern in his scientific work about the early signals of critical transitions in thermoacoustic systems the possibility of application in other fields, from finance to epidemiology.

• One of the hired wierdos, a young man with a good education, would later quit with a scandal due to eugenic and racist remarks discovered by the press.

Cummings studied at Oxford in ancient and modern history (and graduated with honors), but then his interests shifted more and more to the exact sciences – mathematics, physics, and statistical analysis.

• Statistical analysis, data manipulation played a big role in the unexpected victory of Brexit supporters in the 2016 referendum – and the unorthodox use of Big Data in order to reach out to hesitant and potential voters on social networks (this was then used in Donald Trump’s campaign in the USA) allegations of illegal use of personal data and campaign financing.

Later, Cummings wrote an essay about the need for a new type of education called the Odyssey – a combination of natural, social and human sciences, which allows us to comprehend complex systems and see the connections between the biggest problems facing humanity. The twitter account associated with Cummings is called the Odyssey Project. And by the way, Cummings likes the experience of Soviet mathematics schools.

The essay allows you to see Cummings’ motives in a fierce struggle against the elite. He writes about the complexity of the world and that political leaders and so-called experts are not prepared to understand it.

“Few people in parliament, government, or the media studied statistics. They don’t understand terms like“ normal distribution, ”which makes it impossible to make informed decisions about the things for which they are responsible. Problems like“ the impact of financial models on the 2008 crisis ”or“ intelligence and genetics “cannot be understood without basic knowledge of statistics … Ministers are elected from members of parliament, but members of parliament are not elected for their ability to formulate approaches and manage complex organizations.”

Dissatisfaction with the incompetence of political elites leads Cummings to Brexit (he has participated in various anti-European campaigns since the late 90s) – both as a way to free yourself from the EU, and as the possibility of radical reforms within Britain. In his opinion, the actions of the European centralized bureaucracy provoke retaliatory radicalism, which, in turn, will destroy free trade. In an essay written after the referendum, he states:

“Healthy and efficient systems like our immune system or British common law allow us to constantly and quickly fix errors. Unhealthy and inefficient systems like the EU or modern departments of the British government block error correction.”

Cummings saw the future of a liberated Britain as follows: the management of the country on a scientific basis, which allows predicting risks and preventing shocks; restriction of immigration of uneducated labor force and increase for highly educated, especially mathematicians and physicists; government resources are focused on technological breakthroughs with high investment risks, but also high payback – a civilian analogue of the American DARPA. “First Brexit, then ARPA,” said Cummings’s alleged WhatsApp profile.

Boris Johnson also draws the future of Britain after leaving the EU as a country of high technology and the prosperity they brought.

Referendum

The 2016 referendum was a grand and sudden victory for unorthodox approaches. Cummings spoke poorly about the analytical abilities of both the political elite (which he compared with the hero of Tolstoy Oblonsky, who changed his looks like hats), and voters – and looked for appropriate methods.

In an essay, he wrote about the inability of even educated people to understand the essence of the discussion about a single [европейском] the market. Like Oblonsky, they talked about the referendum in terms of the choice of hats – “there are two groups, and I know what I am in.”

“I don’t know a single deputy or political journalist who would understand a single market … We tried to concentrate the media on deeper issues, how the EU works, but for the most part we failed … We could not change the principles of the media but we turned them to our advantage in order to hack the system: “hack the platform, intercept the message”.

As a result, instead of discussing central issues such as trade and the economy, which no one could understand, the voters were offered a history of alternative leadership, the slogans “regain control”, “spend our money on our healthcare”. Of the two simple stories, the “vote for a way out” psychologically turned out to be more attractive.

At this point, Cummings mentions in an essay by Vladislav Surkov, the “communication maestro” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as an example of a master in diverting public attention from important issues through such tricks. (There is no need to draw conclusions about addictions, Cummings immediately writes about Putin’s mafia government and the inability of Western liberals to recognize Putin not as a normal Western politician, but as a mafia ruler, a native of the KGB with views that are far from liberal.)

At the same time, Cummings’ colleague once said that he was ready to use the methods of “Soviet propaganda” to achieve the goal.

The Brexit campaign symbol is London’s red bus with a misleading promise to use £ 350 million to go to the NHS, the British health system. It is said that Cummings understood that the slogan would provoke the fury of his opponents, but that was part of the plan. As a result, the figure of 350 million was on everyone’s lips. “An effective and cynical approach typical of him,” said one of the campaign’s employees, who is critical of Cummings.

Cummings rejected cynical accusations and claimed to have insisted on increasing NHS funding after Johnson came to power. Money can always be found if incompetent government officials stop wasting it, Cummings wrote.

Cummings did not appear at the parliamentary hearing on the dissemination of false information and was accused of contempt of parliament.

Three years in Russia

The fact that Cummings quotes Tolstoy and commemorates Surkov is not an accident: in the mid-90s he spent three years in Russia, going there under the influence of his Oxford professor Norman Stone, who studied Russian history.

Later, when Cummings becomes an adviser to the British government, the opposition will demand information on his Russian connections and on the level of access to classified information – against the background of reports that there are Russian money among the funding sources of the conservatives and that they could be used to finance the company for Brexit. The report of the special services on Russia’s attempts to influence British politics put Johnson’s government on indefinitely. Labor demanded to publish the report before the election.

Emily Thornbury, the shadow foreign secretary, said in particular that over the three “mysterious years” in Russia, Cummings had “allegedly” established ties with influential people, including Surkov. Conservatives responded that Thornbury spreads conspiracy theories in a denigratory campaign.

• Surkov in 1994-1997, when Cummings was in Russia, worked in the government apparatus as a public relations consultant, and then worked in the same field at Rosprom.

The Spectator, a magazine close to conservatives, where Johnson worked as an editor, recruiting Cummings’ future wife, and where the future adviser himself managed the online version of the publication for some time, published a rare photograph of a young Cummings in Russia knocking out a carpet in the courtyard.

Liam Halligan, who sent a photograph to the magazine, a journalist who worked in Moscow at that time, and the author of Pure Brexit, said: “It was the mid-90s. I received a fax from Norman Stone about a brilliant young graduate who wanted to come to Russia. I put him on a sofa in my old “Brezhnev” apartment. The next thing I knew was that he took up investment papers and tried to launch an airline. “

The airline is Samara Airlines’s unsuccessful attempt to establish regular flights between Samara and Vienna.

As for investments, the TASS agency in the early 2000s wrote about the “energetic 30-year-old Dominique Cummings, the lead developer of the party’s current strategy [тори]”:” A graduate of Oxford, he once worked in Russia, helping British investors to decide on the emerging huge market. In 1999, Cummings joined the Euro-Pound Sterling Movement. The views on Russia, partnership with it in the UK, according to Cummings, are fundamentally changing. “

Helligan described the arrival of foreigners in Russia in the mid-90s: “Moscow really raged then. There were all these young guys from the West who were interested in politics and economics at this amazing moment after the end of the Cold War. History was happening before our eyes, and many smart people were involved in this. There is nothing sinister. “

Labor questions, however, remained unanswered:

• what are Cummings’s connections with Oxford scholars, did they discuss the possibility of working in support of the Russian post-communist government,
• Have Cummings been questioned about the purpose of his three-year stay in Russia, including contacts with people from Russian political and intelligence circles,
• Have you asked Cummings about your relationship with Conservative Friends of Russia?

“Finish Brexit”

July 23, 2019 Boris Johnson was elected the leader of the ruling conservative party and the next day became Prime Minister of Great Britain. His predecessor, Theresa May, was forced to leave after Johnson and the other Tories voted against her plan to leave the EU.

July 24, Cummings becomes Johnson’s Senior Advisor, Acting Head of Administration on Downing Street.

Judging by the reviews, Cummings’ leader was tough – which is not hard to imagine, given his attitude to “incompetent managers” in the government. He scandalously fired the Treasury Advisor without the knowledge of the Chancellor of the Treasury, Sajid Javid – and six months later, Javid himself resigned.

Cummings controlled everything and was omnipresent – “like the eye of Sauron,” one of the former government ministers said about this.

The government created a core of referendum campaign veterans loyal to Cummings no less than Johnson.

Johnson’s government decided to withdraw Britain from the EU and thereby fulfill the will of the referendum with an unusually tough strategy.

It announced that Britain would withdraw from the EU without an agreement at all if Brussels did not make concessions, despite the fact that tough Brexit should have dealt a severe blow to the economy. Realizing that this plan will meet fierce opposition from the opposition and part of the Tories in parliament, cabinet strategists led by Cummings decide to suspend parliament for five weeks. The rebel Tories are ruthlessly driven out of the party – although only six months before that, Johnson and the other conservatives themselves sabotaged the party line by voting against the May agreement.

План полностью провалился: на улицы вышли сотни тысяч демонстрантов, приостановку работы парламента отменил суд, парламент унизил Джонсона, предписав ему договориться с ЕС, и Джонсон пошел на уступки, о которых Мэй не могла и помыслить, – согласился на отдельные условия Брекзита для Северной Ирландии, то есть в каком-то смысле пожертвовал целостностью страны (пусть правительство и не признало это публично).

Остался последний способ: раз парламент не дает правительству действовать, изменить сам парламент, который тори уже называют противостоящим воле народа.

Выборы Джонсону выиграл лозунг “Довести Брекзит до конца” (Get Brexit done) – по партийной легенде, произнесенный участником одной из излюбленных Каммингсом фокус-групп, с помощью которых он постоянно изучает реальные предпочтения британских избирателей.

Социологи говорили, что это единственный партийный лозунг, который избиратели могли вспомнить во время кампании.

Это был триумф, особенно после полугода непрерывных поражений: за тори проголосовали даже рабочие округа, которые традиционно поддерживали лейбористскую партию, – возможно, тут помогла крайне непопулярная фигура лидера лейбористов Джереми Корбина.

Брекзит был назначен на конец 2020 года.

Coronavirus

Эпидемия о Брекзите заставила забыть.

Британские власти сначала пыталась заигрывать с идеей коллективного иммунитета, откладывая решительный карантин, чтобы часть населения переболела.

12 марта Джонсон выступил с леденящими словами: “Многие семьи преждевременно потеряют любимых” – при этом власти по-прежнему не вводили полномасштабного карантина. Эта констатация при бездействии выглядела холодным расчетом, готовностью правительства пожертвовать людьми (а за холодным расчетом многим виделся Каммингс).

• На злополучной пресс-конференции Каммингс заявил, что СМИ ложно представляют его позицию по эпидемии и что он предупреждал об опасности коронавирусов в блоге еще год назад. В блоге Каммингса нашли единственное упоминание коронавирусов – в посте об опасности утечки патогенов из биолабораторий, но тут же выяснилось, что абзац про коронавирусы был вставлен только этой весной. Очевидная манипуляция лишь усилила отрицательное впечатление от пресс-конференции.

Спустя две недели, во второй половине марта, курс правительства резко поменялся, был введен жесткий карантин с запретом покидать дома без крайней необходимости. Однако возможным следствием промедления стало то, что Британия сейчас на втором месте в мире по количеству смертей от коронавируса, уступая только США.

Причиной изменения подхода стал, возможно, доклад Имперского колледжа о том, что отсутствие карантина приведет к десяткам тысяч смертей, которых можно избежать. Или, возможно, социологические исследования показали правительству, что общественное мнение – за карантин (в Британии ограничения, идея “жизни важнее экономики” до последнего времени пользовались подавляющей поддержкой).

К этому моменту Каммингс действительно выступал за карантин, утверждали источники “Гардиан”, он участвовал во встрече экспертов-эпидемиологов и высказывался за введение жестких мер (хотя на подобных встречах чиновники не должны присутствовать и тем более оказывать давление).

Какой бы ни была его позиция по карантину, его поездка все перечеркнула. Полиция сообщает теперь о нарушителях карантина, которые в ответ на замечания полицейских отвечают: “Если это в порядке для Каммингса, то в порядке и для нас”, “Похоже, одни правила для нас, другие – для людей с Даунинг-стрит”.

На твит Хэнкока о введении программы “Тестируй и отслеживай”: “Если вам сказали самоизолироваться, исполните гражданский долг и оставайтесь дома, вместе мы победим коронавирус” – актер и писатель Стивен Фрай ответил: “Вы нам говорите о гражданском долге? Вы?”

Прогнозирование будущего

После возвращения из России Каммингс, по большей части, работал с консерваторами, но членом партии никогда не являлся. “Я не тори, либертарианец, “популист” или что-то еще. Я занимаюсь проектами, которые считаю стоящими”, – описывал он свои политические взгляды.

Говоря о будущем Британии после Брекзита, Каммингс заметил, что она должна подать пример демократического либерального самоуправления.

Однако “Экономист” как-то описал Британию Каммингса как “меритократический технополис”, а царство технического прогресса, которым управляют наиболее умные люди, – не самое демократическое устройство государства, трудности начинаются уже с выбора критерия “умных людей”. Возможно, поэтому так мало известно историй успешных меритократий.

Либеральная демократия подразумевает равенство каждого каждому, а “умные люди” жаждут признания их исключительности “обычными людьми”. Каммингс на пресс-конференции отказался признать себя неправым, приводя рациональные доводы, среди которых: он старался как можно быстрее вернуться к работе в правительство, чтобы решить важные проблемы ради тех самих людей, которые предъявляют ему претензии. Рационально – не тратить его время на медийный скандал и дать ему приносить пользу.

Когда-то он и его товарищи по кампании за Брекзит были аутсайдерами, которые бросали вызов системе и готовы были рисковать, использовать все возможности – и победили. Теперь вчерашние аутсайдеры занимают помещение на Даунинг-стрит, они сами – элита, истеблишмент.