Cummings & Goings

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Exit Stage Right - image ©Elsewhere


Well, if the carefully for-the-media-staged exit stage right from Number Ten by Classic Dom is to be believed, he's upped sticks ahead of his self-allotted time. Everything in the world of Westminster politics at the moment seems to be reeling from the fallout from the US Presidential election and Joe Biden's victory in same. It only remains to be seen if this halo effect can further help to reverse some of the damage that this government and its out of control Prime Minister has wreaked thus far on the UK.

Cummings reminds me of someone of personal acquaintance, who I won't name as he's now old and out of the run of things; but who displayed the same level of arrogance and disdain for anyone displaying, as he saw it, an inferior intellect to his own. Classic Dom and his ilk are, like Johnson and Trump, products of this ethos of privilege and assumed superiority; of inherited money and never being told 'No!'. If I could summon the stomach for it, I would say that it is arguable that they are to be pitied as victims of an emotionally impoverished upbringing; but the bile rising in my throat just thinking about it shouts no: with ultimate privilege comes ultimate responsibility.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, responsibility requires a moral compass that these people seem sorely to lack: let's hope [that word again] that lessons are being learned. At least I was right about one thing: the kickback against the government has come largely from the Tories' own back benches, evidently emboldened by the fact of Trump's deposing after just one term of chaos. I would like to think that no-one now has the stomach for more of that kind of politics.

Much, much more needs to be done to mend politics and economics on a global scale and the need that was urgent is so rapidly becoming desperate on a multitude of levels that burying hatchets and getting back to the fundamentals of governance would be a very, very good idea right now: the only way out of the perfect shit storm of poverty, inequality and climate-harm we've created through complacency, populism and de-regulation, is through co-operation and careful regulation: in short, fairness for all. Be nice for once.

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