Last night Guido ventured over to The Other Palace theatre in Westminster for the opening night of DOM – The Play, which is currently showing every night until the 5th March. Written by Neil Green, it’s a two-hour whistle stop tour through the Westminster circus, told through the eyes of “the most controversial figure to emerge in UK politics over the last decade.” Not exactly a shortage of material…
It’ll be familiar territory for SW1. There are plenty of gags about Partygate and Barnard Castle, and the Vote Leave “£350 million a week” bus gets more than a couple of mentions. The nervous laughter from the middle class Guardian readers in the audience when “Boris” showed up towards the middle of the first act didn’t go unnoticed…
There are four actors (Dom, Boris, and two versatile supporting actors, one of whom does a decent Michael Gove impression), and all four seemed to be having fun with it. Boris, played by Tim Hudson, obviously gets the most laughs. The first half of the play (pre-Boris) will appeal to misfits and weirdos – though it is very much a parody of the reality of Dom. Tickets are still available, starting at £20, although they’re selling fast…
Despite making his favouritism for Rishi fairly obvious while briefing against Boris during Partygate, Dominic Cummings doesn’t seem that optimistic about the Tories’ chances at the next election. Speaking on a podcast yesterday, Dom argued it was reasonable for the public to blame the Tories for the current mess the country’s in, however:
“If you had a top-notch campaign team working in No. 10 now, then you could definitely knock Keir Starmer very far off course. You could break his whole decision-making system, you could shake up the game, you’d definitely have a good shot at shaking the whole thing up enough you make it competitive for sure. And then if you can make it competitive then the best team has got a chance of winning.”
He observes, however, that the current government appears content to lose nicely rather than win via unconventional methods, which have been proved to rile up the sensibilities of Home County Tories and the north London media. Clearly based on the outcome of the summer 2022 leadership race, rumours that Cummings was secretly advising Rishi Sunak weren’t true – or at least his advice wasn’t heeded…
The Supreme Court has, regretfully, told Jolyon they won’t be wasting their time hearing his appeal case on the Michael Gove verdict. Meaning Jolyon ends the year just as he began it… with yet another loss.
Back in January, the Court of Appeal overturned a prior High Court ruling that a procurement contract was unlawfully awarded to Public First – a firm with links to Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove. Jolyon and the Good Law Project reacted with “profound surprise” as their impossibly rare win turned to dust before their eyes, and vowed to take it to the highest court in the land to seek justice. They failed.
The Supreme Court refused the appeal because “the application does not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance“, and in the “emergency context created by the pandemic”. Looks like they had better things to be doing this Christmas…
Dominic Cummings writing in his latest substack:
“There’s a lot of chatter about people like The Rock but I’m sceptical. I can imagine The Rock launching with the right message and a great campaign but it probably won’t happen and even if it does it will probably fail. And there’s nobody as famous as him who has done a job like Governor and is ready to move up. If The Rock becomes Governor somewhere and is reasonably successful, then it’s much easier to imagine a Presidential campaign getting somewhere.”
Tom Scholar’s sacking yesterday afternoon, first confirmed by Guido, naturally fell under the radar given the news from Balmoral that followed minutes later. The removal of the Treasury’s longstanding Permanent Secretary, however, could prove as influential on the next two years’ economic policy as Liz Truss’s £100+ billion splurge on energy price controls. Tom Scholar’s career was accidentally given an extra year when he was re-appointed as the Treasury’s Sir Humphrey in January 2021, just after Dominic Cummings’ departure. Tom had been a prominent member of Cummings’ civil service “sh*t list”…
Two years prior to Scholar’s sacking, to the day, Guido reported that six of Cummings’ list had been shown the door, many due to “Remainer” tendencies as one government source said. They included Jonathan Jones (Legal Department), Mark Sedwill (Cabinet Secretary), Simon McDonald (Foreign Office), Philip Rutnam (Home Office), Richard Heaton (Justice) and Jonathan Slater (Education). Two years later, Cummings’ mission is finally complete…
Naturally plenty of establishment, pro-blob sympathisers are outraged. David Gauke, Gus O’Donnell, Nick Macpherson and the FT’s Chris Giles all came out strongly against the move yesterday afternoon:
As far as reactions go, Liz and Kwasi couldn’t have hoped for better. As Liz says, the economy’s been failing for decades; we haven’t seen proper wage growth in 20 years. Steady hands, genteel lifetime service in the Civil Service and a history degree from Cambridge clearly hasn’t been working. Despite a 70-seat Tory majority, the establishment is still working against the elected mandate of the government to preserve their centrist way of governing. A shake-up is long overdue, and all the right people hate it…
Last night the government finally published Lord True’s response to ACOBA (Advisory Committee on Business Appointments) Chair Lord Pickles over Dominic Cummings’ potential breaking of ‘revolving door’ rules with his Substack blog. The long and short of it is that while True thinks Cummings did break the business appointment rules by offering to help his readers “win an election” for a fee… there’s not much that can be done about it:
“… My assessment is that Mr Cummings, in this and other matters, did not follow the rules correctly. However, this case has also highlighted that once ACOBA has decided not to rule on an application, there is no mechanism for an individual to seek to remedy that breach in good faith. In that light, I agree with you that the review of business appointment rules needs to be accelerated and completed.”
True goes on to say that while “the vast majority of former Crown servants” do follow the rules – limiting how former ministers and advisers can sell their expertise after office for at least two years – ACOBA is essentially toothless when those rules are broken:
“Former officials are responsible for following the correct process for seeking advice about any appointments or employment they wish to take up within two years of leaving office, and it is vital to the integrity of government that they fulfil these responsibilities in good faith. While the vast majority of former Crown servants do so and abide by any conditions imposed, where such intentions are lacking, the current system offers too few avenues to achieve effective redress.”
He adds that the government is now at least looking at “strengthening” the rules in future…
