Dominic Cummings

Dominic Mckenzie Cummings (born 25 November 1971) is a British political strategist who served as Chief Adviser to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson from 24 July 2019 until he resigned on 13 November 2020.

From 2007 to 2014, he was a special adviser to Michael Gove, including the time that Gove served as Education Secretary, leaving when Gove was made Chief Whip in a cabinet reshuffle. From 2015 to 2016, Cummings was director of Vote Leave, an organisation which successfully executed the 2016 referendum campaign for Britain's exit from the European Union. After Johnson was appointed prime minister in July 2019, Cummings was appointed as Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister. Cummings had a contentious relationship with Chancellor Sajid Javid which culminated in Javid's resignation in February 2020 after he refused to comply with Cummings's request to dismiss his special advisers.

A scandal involving Cummings occurred in May 2020, after it was reported that he travelled to his parents' farm in Durham during the COVID-19 lockdowns while experiencing COVID-19 symptoms. 45 Conservative MPs called for his resignation and Cummings was criticised by opposition parties for noncompliance with public health restrictions. After Cummings held a press conference explaining his journey, Johnson supported his chief adviser by saying Cummings had acted "responsibly, legally and with integrity". Durham police said that they did not consider an offence was committed when Cummings travelled from London to Durham and that a minor breach might have occurred in travelling from there to Barnard Castle. The scandal negatively affected the public's trust in the government's pandemic response.

Since leaving Downing Street in November 2020, Cummings has criticised the British government response to the COVID-19 pandemic and Johnson's leadership on several occasions.

Early life

Cummings was born in Durham on 25 November 1971. His father, Robert, now a farmer, had a varied career, primarily as an oil rig project manager for Laing, the construction firm. His mother, Morag, became a teacher and behavioural specialist after private schooling and university. Sir John Laws, a former Lord Justice of Appeal, was his maternal uncle.

After attending state primary school, he was privately educated at Durham School and later attended Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied under Norman Stone, graduating in 1994 with a First in Ancient and Modern History. One of his former tutors has described him to the New Statesman as "fizzing with ideas, unconvinced by any received set of views about anything". He was "something like a Robespierre – someone determined to bring down things that don’t work." Also in his youth, he worked at Klute, a nightclub owned by his uncle in Durham.

After graduating, Cummings moved to Russia and lived there until 1997. He shared a flat with the later Brexit-supporting economist Liam Halligan.

He worked for a group attempting to set up an airline connecting Samara in southern Russia to Vienna in Austria which George Parker of the Financial Times said was "spectacularly unsuccessful".

Political career

From 1999 to 2002, Cummings was campaign director at Business for Sterling, the campaign against the UK joining the euro. He then became Director of Strategy for Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith for eight months in 2002, aiming to modernise the Conservative Party (of which he was not a member). He soon left in frustration at the introduction of what he saw as half-measures, labelling Duncan Smith "incompetent".

The New Frontiers Foundation, a free-market libertarian and Eurosceptic think tank which grew out of Business For Sterling, was founded by Cummings in December 2003, with James Frayne as its co-founder. Cummings directed the group, and was described by Andrew Pierce in The Times as "a youthful, mercurial figure who has brought together a diverse coalition including Bob Geldof and the Labour MP Frank Field to oppose the single currency". The Foundation published articles and papers which argued against the United Kingdom having 'ever-closer union' with the European Union at the cost of defence links with the United States. It also argued for the abolition of all trade tariffs, reform of the United Nations, research into hypersonic bombers, the creation of a research body to fund high-risk scientific projects, reform of the British civil service, and the abolition of the BBC as a public service broadcaster. The Foundation argued that the BBC was the "mortal enemy" of Conservatives, saying: "There are three structural things that the right needs to happen in terms of communications. 1) the undermining of the BBC's credibility; 2) the creation of a Fox News equivalent / talk radio shows / bloggers etc to shift the centre of gravity; 3) the end of the ban on TV political advertising". The Foundation closed in March 2005.

Cummings was a key figure in North East Says No (NESNO) the successful campaign against a North-East Regional Assembly in 2004. Populist tactics used in this referendum were later seen as a precursor to ones used by Cummings during the Brexit referendum; for example, Cummings argued against the Assembly on the basis of increased money for the NHS, and toured the region with a huge prop white elephant. After the campaign, Cummings moved to his father's farm in County Durham.

In 2006, while in a position of what Andrew Neil called "overall responsibility" for the website of The Spectator, Cummings republished a controversial cartoon depicting Muhammed with a bomb in his turban. This was the first time the cartoon had been published by any British news organisation and was removed after interventions from the publisher of The Spectator.

Special Adviser to Michael Gove (2007–2014)

Cummings worked for Conservative politician Michael Gove in various roles in opposition and government from 2007 to 2014. From February 2011 to January 2014, he was special adviser (spad) and Chief of Staff to Gove at the Department for Education (DfE). His appointment was initially blocked by Andy Coulson from 2010 until January 2011. Cummings was later appointed in February 2011 after Coulson's resignation. In this capacity, Cummings wrote a 237-page essay titled "Some thoughts on education and political priorities", about transforming Britain into a "meritocratic technopolis"; the essay was described by Guardian journalist Patrick Wintour as "either mad, bad or brilliant – and probably a bit of all three".

Cummings was known in the DfE for his blunt style and "not suffering fools gladly"; he and Michael Gove railed against the "blob", the informal alliance of senior civil servants and teachers who, in their opinion, sought to frustrate attempts at reform. Cummings was also outspoken regarding other senior politicians, describing Nick Clegg's proposals on free school meals as "Dreamed up on the back of a cigarette packet", and David Davis as "thick as mince" and "lazy as a toad". Patrick Wintour described the Cummings–Gove working relationship: "Gove, polite to a fault, would often feign ignorance of his adviser's methods, but knew full well the dark arts that Cummings deployed to get his master's way". In 2014, Prime Minister David Cameron, at a Policy Exchange speech in 2014 mentioned a "career psychopath", which was interpreted by several media outlets as a reference to Cummings, although the two had never met.

In 2012, a senior female civil servant was awarded a payout of £25,000 in a bullying case against Cummings and a senior member of Michael Gove's team, when Cummings was a special adviser at the Department for Education.

During his time as an official working for Gove, Cummings received a warning from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for use of private Gmail accounts to deal with government business, saying it should be 'actively discouraged'. The ICO uncovered an email from Cummings in which he said: "i will not answer any further emails to my official DfE account or from conservatives.com – i will only answer things that come from Gmail accounts from people who I know who they are" [sic]. Cummings said that this referred to the Conservative Party conference, not government business.

In 2014, Cummings left his job as a special adviser and noted that he might endeavour to open a free school. He had previously worked for the New Schools Network charity that advises free schools, as a volunteer from June 2009 and then as a paid freelancer from July to December 2010.