Another week, another Cummings Substack* – this time answering his most-asked question of why he helped Boris in 2019 if he knew him to be unsuitable for the top job. To precis the 4,600-word post, while Cummings believed “Boris is obviously unfit for the job”, he thought the combination of a second referendum – which would “be violent” – and Corbyn as PM would be an “even bigger disaster”. Cummings claims the day after the Brexit vote Boris told him “Obviously it’s ludicrous me being PM — but no more ludicrous than Dave or George, don’t you think?”

Alongside resuming his attacks on Carrie – something he promises will be further advanced in his next Substack – he writes of Boris’s character, “He is both much more useless than the media portray and much more capable of self-awareness and ruthlessness than they ever portray, or his enemies usually discern.” He contrasts the PM with David Cameron, who was Boris’s opposite insofar as being portrayed by the media as simple on the surface with mysteries beneath the surface.

The most humorous claim from Cummings is on Boris’s attempted persuasion to get him to join his No. 10 team in 2019. Cummings demanded Boris “do whatever it takes, when officials start babbling about Ireland, the union, the rule of law and what not”:

“we just keep bulldozing. Prorogue. Refuse Royal Assent. Whatever. They’re trying to overthrow the biggest democratic vote ever, we’re entitled to use extreme measures to stop them.”

Boris declared:

“We did the referendum, come on, you’ve got to do it and it’ll be great fun to smash all those ***** again.”

Cummings leaves it up to readers’ imaginations to fill in the blank. Guido has a few ideas…

*Guido encourages readers to subscribe here, if only to avoid Cummings’ threat of submitting invoices to editors whose hacks don’t offer enough credit to the author…