Most reviews of Get In, the recently published history of Keir Starmer’s Labour by the Times journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, focused on its exposure of the prime minister’s unease with the rough and tumble of politics, and his consequent reliance on Morgan McSweeney, now his chief of staff. A spectacular what-might-have-been moment in the book concerns another Downing Street svengali figure, however; one rumoured to be plotting Nigel Farage’s path to power at the next election.
At the beginning of 2019, it turns out, Dominic Cummings attempted to convince aides to Jeremy Corbyn that Labour should vote for Theresa May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement, thereby prompting a split in the Conservative party and a swift election. Labour could then fight and win that contest on its own natural territory of funding the NHS and public services. As Cummings put it in a text to Corbyn’s spokesperson: “You get Brexit through, [People’s Vote] fucked … high chance of Govt collapse … Tory civil war guaranteed for years in any scenario.”
