Dominic Cummings stuns peers with rant about Britain’s ‘duff’ political system

Britain has moved on from the rancorous days of Covid lockdowns and the chaotic UK government of the time, led by Boris Johnson. Dominic Cummings, it seems, has not.

The arch Brexiteer Cummings was Johnson’s conflict-prone chief adviser in Downing Street for most of 2020. He now works as a consultant and occasional Substack author. On Wednesday morning he also appeared in front of a House of Lords committee to opine on the functioning of the UK’s unwritten constitution and its arms of government.

Cummings gave a typically abrasive performance, a throwback to the old days when he prowled Downing Street while lambasting civil servants and Westminster journalists.

He stunned the peers listening on Wednesday in the wood-panelled surrounds of committee room one with a litany of rants about Britain’s “duff” system of “shitshows” and his belief that Russia’s Vladimir Putin is not the main enemy, before aiming a series of digs at his political foes, including former UK health secretary Matt Hancock.

“Do you really want Hancock making decisions?” he asked, seconds after subtly referencing the former politician’s pandemic-era marital affair with one of his aides.

The Lords constitution committee was holding an inquiry into the UK’s balance of powers and its constitutional safeguards. It invited Cummings in to speak as a long-time critic of the system. He arrived displaying his characteristic sartorial style, clad in a crumpled shirt with sleeves rolled up, crumpled green anorak and red baseball cap.

He launched into a lament about the “fake charade” of the existing system, in which an independent civil service is meant to serve UK governments of all hues. Things were better before 19th-century reforms ushered in the modern civil service and, he suggested, ministers were truly accountable to the UK parliament

“That is the system under which the British Empire grew and we took over the world. Why can’t we have that system back?” he said.

Cummings said “elite talent” no longer wanted to work in government, while the UK’s cabinet office, he suggested, had become too powerful and was now setting policy.

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“If you’ve got duff people, then the institutions will be duff,” he said. “Great people have options. They’re not going to go and sit in stupid meetings with PowerPoint after PowerPoint with no one actually taking responsibility for anything.”

He suggested that all the “great people” he had encouraged into the cabinet office in 2020 had since been “pushed out” or “left in disgust” to work in fields such as artificial intelligence. Government had been left with “the worst kind of HR people”.

At one point he cupped his ears while being questioned by a peer. “I’m sorry, my ears don’t work so well,” said Cummings. The peer was trying to ask him if the felt the UK’s constitution was “under threat”.

“Yes it is under threat,” Cummings replied, because of a “general collapse” in the UK public’s trust in institutions.

“Because of the internet, people can now see the lies they have been told [by government],” he said.

Putin, he said, was “a tiny problem” related to civil servants in the ministry of defence (MoD) and cabinet office lawyers investigating UK troops.

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“It’s not Putin who’s launching lawfare against the SAS; it’s not Putin who’s destroyed procurement inside the MoD ... It’s not Putin who’s stopping the MoD learning from drones in Ukraine. It’s the civil servants who tell the people who come back from Ukraine: ‘Don’t tell anybody senior what you see in Ukraine about drones because that will jeopardise all our budgets.’”

He said ministers didn’t want to take responsibility for anything and civil servants believed MPs were “thick”. So the civil service ended up running everything instead.

As Cummings ranted on, a few of the peers grimaced while others smirked.

“Dominic, I sense you’re warming to your theme,” said committee chair Thomas Galbraith, Lord Strathclyde.

“These things have all been said before,” said another lord.

“Yes, it’s all in Yes Minister,” said Cummings, referencing the cult 1980s television show.

He said people believe politicians “govern like they hate us”.

“This building must start taking responsibility,” he said, punctuating each word with a tap on the table as he lectured the peers in front of him.

Meanwhile, he said, the role of the civil service should be to “follow orders”.