[Politics] Sajid Javid resigns as Chancellor of the Exchequer

[Titanic]

 

[raymondo]

I think we'll see a lot more cummings and goings as the year unfolds .....

 

[rippleman]

From Wikipedia:

'After university, Cummings moved to post-Soviet Russia from 1994 to 1997, working on various projects'

Anyone else smell fish?

Funny you should post that! I was about to post that he appears to be a Stalinist.

Maybe that explains why the report on Russian interference in our elections appears to have "disappeared". My understanding is that the PM authorised its publication last December but to date - still no report!

 

[vegster]

From Wikipedia:

'After university, Cummings moved to post-Soviet Russia from 1994 to 1997, working on various projects'

Anyone else smell fish?

Caviar maybe ?

 

[TheJasperCo]

Ever dependable is Thunder Bolt, but I'm going to have to pull her up on a couple of points.

His Indian millionaire in laws, and those who went to Eton with him?

An ideal candidate for the nation’s finances. He will have a great understanding of the population’s daily struggles and cost of living.

From a journalist earlier today:

Civil Servants have to abide by a code of practice including signing the Official Secrets Act. Cummings, is just someone who has Johnson’s ear, with no such constraints.

Moot point; signing the OSA is functionally redundant. Each one of us is bound by the laws of the OSA in our day-to-day lives. Signing the OSA is meaningless.

 

[BLOCK F]

His Indian millionaire in laws, and those who went to Eton with him?

An ideal candidate for the nation’s finances. He will have a great understanding of the population’s daily struggles and cost of living.

Yes,Rishi Sunak's in-laws are very wealthy, but I understand that his father was a G.P. and his mother was a pharmacist.
I also read that he was educated, not at Eton, but Winchester College............just like Seamus Milne and James Schneider, the ghastly Labour 'advisers'!

 

[TheJasperCo]

I think its very hard to know who the real Cummings is. He is portrayed as a narcissist, a bully, there's everything you say. He is linked so heavily to Brexit we see him as a right-wing free-market small-government type. I don't think that's true.

I read a few interviews with him and articles about him, there are lots of contradictions. But he does come across as someone who wants to 'do politics better'. And I admire that. Some excerpts:

from the New Statesman - if this is who he really is, then I have to be interested in the person espousing this philosophy

"In 2014, I saw Cummings speak about his time in government. His speech sprinted through a series of loosely connected ideas from neuroscience, complexity theory and geopolitics, like an Adam Curtis documentary played at triple speed. He talked of a political system that “selects for narcissists”.

“Look around parliament. Who are the kind of people that get ahead? People who are glib, who enjoy public speaking, who make jokes.” Government, he said, is overly dominated by arts graduates who have no experience of managing large organisations. It needs fewer people who care about climbing the greasy pole, and more who “just want to get things done”. It’s hard to see how the answer to this problem is Boris Johnson. But then, I suspect Cummings has long seen Johnson as a useful vehicle awaiting a driver.

Presumably this talk:


Not a great speaker, but it's apparent just how intelligent he is. His dislike of civil servants is evident from this video. But, I think he misses the point with our democracy, where the public at large is very disconnected from the political sphere. His insights and high-level knowledge (economics theory, scientific aims, corporate governance etc.) probably don't resonante with the average Joe on the street.

It's like he takes forever to say something as profound as "the political class is out of touch with voters." Whether Cummings appreciates the subtle irony here or not is unclear.

 

[spence]

Javid a remainer Rishi a Brexiteer

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I think its very hard to know who the real Cummings is. He is portrayed as a narcissist, a bully, there's everything you say. He is linked so heavily to Brexit we see him as a right-wing free-market small-government type. I don't think that's true.

He has been in politics a long time. He campaigned against the euro when Blair was PM, and against the NE assembly. Won both of those. He worked closely with IDS when he was leader and with Gove in the education department, and both of those went to shit. So he's no magic wand. I think he found it impossible to beat the establishment from the inside. Then back to campaigning with Vote Leave, resoundingly successful. Now in the PM's office, maybe he can beat the establishment by changing it from the top.

I read a few interviews with him and articles about him, there are lots of contradictions. But he does come across as someone who wants to 'do politics better'. And I admire that. Some excerpts:<snip>

So - I can't see him succeeding. But for me, a liberal voting, remain-fanatic, I see a lot to interest me in Cummings. And getting rid of Javid because he wanted to keep his own fiefdom in his office rather than coordinate with the leader's office, well it fits the profile.

Brilliant post. Very interesting. I must say I misjudged Boris. I still dislike him, and doubt he has any decent thought-through ideas of his own, but it seems that this may not be the point.

Someone mentioned Boris will not tolerate Cummings seizing power. I think that totally misjudges their relationship. Cummings knows he needs an appealing frontman with charisma and charm, indeed, the power of self-effacement, to pursue the Cummings vision. Boris, meanwhile, is thrilled to be leader and quite happy to hitch his wagon to this strategist. Boris is a man without strong convictions, a social liberal and gadabout. Cummings has given him purpose.

Boris won the tory leadership, the general election, and the final Brexit vote by following Cumming's guidance. Boris is no angry gammon. All the while the outcomes are successful he will stick with Cummings, happy to stalk the corridors of power and privilage with a simple script and someone else doing the hard thinking for him.

Blair had Mandleson and Campbell. That was a cracking team, and the wheels came off for Blair only after that team dismantled itself, with Mandleson's ego taking him into parliament as an MP, and Blair allowing himself to be bullied by the gloomy jock. Stupid move.

Everything always unravels in the end, but I can see the Boris Cummings team having a series of wins. It may well collapse if there is a hard Brexit at the end of the year, followed by a recession, but despite my better judgement and loathing of Boris, I can see Boris even winning that one, somehow. He's also lucky at the moment. Who thought, until very recently, that a united Ireland might be on the cards? The catholic vote in NI is currently split, but with 48% of the population protestant and 45% catholic, who knows what may happen if 'closer ties' with the south becomes more of a thing? With the hard border with the EU in the Irish Sea still a possibility, we live in interesting times.

 

[highflyer]

I think its very hard to know who the real Cummings is. He is portrayed as a narcissist, a bully, there's everything you say. He is linked so heavily to Brexit we see him as a right-wing free-market small-government type. I don't think that's true.

He has been in politics a long time. He campaigned against the euro when Blair was PM, and against the NE assembly. Won both of those. He worked closely with IDS when he was leader and with Gove in the education department, and both of those went to shit. So he's no magic wand. I think he found it impossible to beat the establishment from the inside. Then back to campaigning with Vote Leave, resoundingly successful. Now in the PM's office, maybe he can beat the establishment by changing it from the top.

I read a few interviews with him and articles about him, there are lots of contradictions. But he does come across as someone who wants to 'do politics better'. And I admire that. Some excerpts:

from the New Statesman - if this is who he really is, then I have to be interested in the person espousing this philosophy

"In 2014, I saw Cummings speak about his time in government. His speech sprinted through a series of loosely connected ideas from neuroscience, complexity theory and geopolitics, like an Adam Curtis documentary played at triple speed. He talked of a political system that “selects for narcissists”.

“Look around parliament. Who are the kind of people that get ahead? People who are glib, who enjoy public speaking, who make jokes.” Government, he said, is overly dominated by arts graduates who have no experience of managing large organisations. It needs fewer people who care about climbing the greasy pole, and more who “just want to get things done”. It’s hard to see how the answer to this problem is Boris Johnson. But then, I suspect Cummings has long seen Johnson as a useful vehicle awaiting a driver.

Cummings isn’t a right-wing radical – he rails against private sector bonuses and despises Nigel Farage. Rather than being anti-government, he wants a different kind of government: faster, fitter, future-focused. He is now at the centre of power for the first time, courtesy of a man who embodies everything he despises about politics. If he is at peace with that it’s probably because he sees an opportunity to set fire to the system that overpromotes people like Johnson. In 2014, he noted that Britain’s centralised power structure means that “if a group of people take over a party… you could actually change an awful lot, very quickly”.

Then there is this from an article in Foreignpolicy.com - in my committed Remainer's mind probably the best argument for Brexit, and it came from Dominic Cummings:

This raises the larger question of why Cummings wanted Brexit in the first place? The answer is even more interesting than the tactics he used to bring it about. At the Nudgestock conference in Folkestone, England, a year after the referendum, an audience member asked Cummings whether he felt guilty for what he had done. “For me … the worst-case scenario for Europe is a return to 1930s-style protectionism and extremism. And to me the EU project, the Eurozone project, are driving the growth of extremism,” Cummings replied. “The single most important reason, really, for why I wanted to get out of the EU is I think that it will drain the poison of a lot of political debates … UKIP and Nigel Farage would be finished,” he said. “Once there’s democratic control of immigration policy, immigration will go back to being a second- or third-order issue.”

"The single most important reason... to get out of the EU is that it will drain the poison of a lot of political debates … UKIP and Nigel Farage would be finished - immigration will go back to being a second- or third-order issue" - Thats quite a powerful thought

and again, that article goes on to talk about Cumming's vision, which I find aligns with mine in many ways..

Cummings is more of an entrepreneur than a politician. Some of his greatest idols are Otto von Bismarck, Richard Feynman, and Sun Tzu. He disdains red tape, empty prestige, and overpaid charlatans; he loves technology, evolutionary psychology, and the science of super-forecasting. His greatest interest of all is how to produce high-performance institutions, capable of both making difficult decisions and course-correcting during crises. And he believes that the EU’s inability to do either of these things has lent oxygen to populist opportunists and put the future of international cooperation at risk.

.In laying out his own vision for a post-Brexit Britain, Cummings barely mentions national identity. His concerns are structural, not cultural—he is preoccupied with free trade, not ethnic replacement. He wants to increase skilled immigration and turn the U.K. into a magnet for young scientists from across the world, using the comparative advantages of the country’s National Health Service to take a lead in the controversial field of genomic medicine (the technology that allows doctors to detect disease risk and cognitive problems in embryos). He even proposes providing open borders to math and computer science Ph.D.s — not out of generosity, but out of an absolutist belief in scientific talent—an idea that Johnson has already taken up. Indeed, Cummings uses the word “talent” repeatedly in his writings. The Chinese Communist Party attracts talent, he contends; the EU and U.K. do not.

If liberal democratic values are to survive, the institutions that defend them require an overhaul. They must be streamlined, democratized, and updated at the same rate as the technology sector. Otherwise, the decisive policymaking of China’s authoritarian model—better suited to tackling climate change and other long-term challenges—could make it a serious rival to the West’s staid, stagnant bureaucracies.

So - I can't see him succeeding. But for me, a liberal voting, remain-fanatic, I see a lot to interest me in Cummings. And getting rid of Javid because he wanted to keep his own fiefdom in his office rather than coordinate with the leader's office, well it fits the profile.

I think it is right that he's not a classic economically right-wing neoliberal. He doesn't necessarily want smaller government. He just wants to be in contol of government. That is the clash within the Tory party. There are still very powerful forces that will want what Javid represented. Austerity, tax cuts for the wealthy, smaller government.

But, when it comes to Tories, my enemies enemies are not always my friends. Cummings? I don't trust him. Nothing I have heard, seen or read inclines me to trust him. Quite the opposite. His populism is that of the old fashioned demagogue. Don't devolve power away from central governmemt to the people. Devolve it to ME. Because I am so fantastically clever (just look at all those clever references and words I use) that I should be in charge.

I was (is) actually pretty sanguine about Brexit, as I think was Cummings (it was just a means to end end to him). I am also very much of the view that politics, and the establishment, needs shaking up.

But to what end? And at what cost? Its clear that Cummings has been prepared stoke up racism, undermine public trust in the media, bring on a damaging hard brexit. Whatever it takes to get himself (via Boris the puppet) into power. The end justifies the means as far as he is concerned. Why would you trust someone who is prepared to do all that? And it's not like he's set out some searing vision of a future Britain (beyond...'the elite are bad and I am clever').What does he think about climate change, and Britains role in tackling it? What kind of ownership structure does he want for public services? How would he set about redistributing wealth? What about land reform? Industrial policy?

What do we know about his thinking on any of this? Almost nothing. Yet he is, effectively, running the country.

Overhaul democratic institutions? Maybe.

Trust Dominic Cummings? Nah.

He's a political version of Elon Musk. A messy mix of messiah complex and total dickheadishness.

 

[portlock seagull]

You could have written a similar thing for Tony Blair and his government's desire to take us into two conflicts.

Not true. When Blair came to power, nobody could foreseen what came to pass. And He wasn’t elected on the back of the sort of evidence we had in advance about Boris.

Nope we’ve never elected a leader before, knowing as much as we do about them, as Johnson. He’s been leaving crash after crash in his wake and proved utterly incompetent for a dozen years or more which is why it’s all the more puzzling he got elected. Electorate as I said can be moronic at times. History shows this happens from time and time even with worryingly known advanced warning. This sort of chaos should not come as a surprise therefore. Unless you’ve just arrived on planet Earth in which case you’re excused

 

[spence]

Brilliant post. Very interesting. I must say I misjudged Boris. I still dislike him, and doubt he has any decent thought-through ideas of his own, but it seems that this may not be the point.

Someone mentioned Boris will not tolerate Cummings seizing power. I think that totally misjudges their relationship. Cummings knows he needs an appealing frontman with charisma and charm, indeed, the power of self-effacement, to pursue the Cummings vision. Boris, meanwhile, is thrilled to be leader and quite happy to hitch his wagon to this strategist. Boris is a man without strong convictions, a social liberal and gadabout. Cummings has given him purpose.

Boris won the tory leadership, the general election, and the final Brexit vote by following Cumming's guidance. Boris is no angry gammon. All the while the outcomes are successful he will stick with Cummings, happy to stalk the corridors of power and privilage with a simple script and someone else doing the hard thinking for him.

Blair had Mandleson and Campbell. That was a cracking team, and the wheels came off for Blair only after that team dismantled itself, with Mandleson's ego taking him into parliament as an MP, and Blair allowing himself to be bullied by the gloomy jock. Stupid move.

Everything always unravels in the end, but I can see the Boris Cummings team having a series of wins. It may well collapse if there is a hard Brexit at the end of the year, followed by a recession, but despite my better judgement and loathing of Boris, I can see Boris even winning that one, somehow. He's also lucky at the moment. Who thought, until very recently, that a united Ireland might be on the cards? The catholic vote in NI is currently split, but with 48% of the population protestant and 45% catholic, who knows what may happen if 'closer ties' with the south becomes more of a thing? With the hard border with the EU in the Irish Sea still a possibility, we live in interesting times.

Recession ? Not this again ffs.

 

[sparkie]

Recession ? Not this again ffs. [emoji38]ol:

GDP has already flatlined at 0% in the figures released this week.

If it goes negative for 2 successive quarters then.... recession it is.

 

[Dick Head]

He looks like one of those pictures where they take the eyes, mouth and hair from different people and you have to work out who.

I expect most people are trying to work out who he is anyway.

 

[BLOCK F]

Not true. When Blair came to power, nobody could foreseen what came to pass. And He wasn’t elected on the back of the sort of evidence we had in advance about Boris.

Nope we’ve never elected a leader before, knowing as much as we do about them, as Johnson. He’s been leaving crash after crash in his wake and proved utterly incompetent for a dozen years or more which is why it’s all the more puzzling he got elected. Electorate as I said can be moronic at times. History shows this happens from time and time even with worryingly known advanced warning. This sort of chaos should not come as a surprise therefore. Unless you’ve just arrived on planet Earth in which case you’re excused

Well, one of the reasons Boris was elected, was that the electorate wasn't sufficiently moronic to elect Corbyn!
Thank f--k for that!

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Ever dependable is Thunder Bolt, but I'm going to have to pull her up on a couple of points.



From a journalist earlier today:
View attachment 120148




Moot point; signing the OSA is functionally redundant. Each one of us is bound by the laws of the OSA in our day-to-day lives. Signing the OSA is meaningless.

Fair enough, I stand corrected but time will tell.

 

[Dick Head]

 

[West Hoathly Seagull]

Apparently sacked because he said, a while back, that a No deal Brexit would be bad for NI.

This is causing serious annoyance in Northern Ireland, particularly from the Abuse Survivors' Group, as he had set up an inquiry. Praise from politicians there was pretty well universal too. As I said earlier, do a good job in this government and you get sacked.

 

[portlock seagull]

Well, one of the reasons Boris was elected, was that the electorate wasn't sufficiently moronic to elect Corbyn!
Thank f--k for that!

‘‘Twas a Hobson’s choice but got look at how these two ever got near the ballot box. Electorate also responsible for that ultimately.

 

[Lower West Stander]

His Indian millionaire in laws, and those who went to Eton with him?

An ideal candidate for the nation’s finances. He will have a great understanding of the population’s daily struggles and cost of living.

Like Gordon Brown then? Or even Denis Healey...


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