Partly this is due to his assiduous cultivation of an image as a ruthless and single-minded revolutionary, a man for whom sacred cows are treated like big game: Cummings knows he is box-office.
He met Matt Zarb-Cousin, Corbyn’s former spokesman, and director of strategic communications James Schneider, and set out a plan for Labour: embrace leaving the European Union by supporting Theresa May’s Brexit deal and thereby widen the split in the Conservative Party between Leavers and Remainers and bring down the government.
Cummings’s advice came with a warning of the consequences of not following it. If Corbyn and his shadow cabinet colleagues continued to call for a second referendum on Britain’s EU membership, he cautioned, they would face Conservative charges of refusing to accept “the will of the people” and of working against the interest of the working class, especially on controlling immigration.
Achieving the downfall of an institution as venerable as the Conservative Party would be a feature rather than a bug in his approach, with an instinct to tear systems apart his equivalent of burning stubble to foster the growth of new crops.
Given the rebuff, Cummings adopted a different approach. He became Boris Johnson’s chief adviser and strategist when he succeeded May as prime minister in July 2019, and then co-ordinated an insurgent general election strategy of his own; the message was that the new Conservative leader would “get Brexit done” and it saw the party win unprecedented support in traditionally Labour-supporting areas, the so-called “Red Wall”.
Dominic Cummings is back - but we don't need to worry
Read MoreIn a basic sense, Brexit did “get done”. Whatever view you take on the terms of the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement negotiated under Johnson, the United Kingdom formally left the European Union in January 2020, an event that some Brexiteers had begun to fear might never actually take place. The adjustment is still taking place, and many would like to see it reversed, but Cummings helped get it over the line.
Labour’s emphatic majority at last year’s general election should not obscure the fact that, even after Starmer succeeded Corbyn in 2020, the party was mired in crisis and unpopularity, and Johnson could talk of a decade as prime minister without any sense of over-optimism.
The challenge is finding a way to transform that foresight into action.
Eliot Wilson is a writer, commentator and former clerk in the House of Commons from 2005 to 2016
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Classic Dom: turns out Cummings was right all along )
Also on site :