31 October. Halloween. Dominic Cummings has decided to come dressed for his appearance before the Covid inquiry as … Dominic Cummings. Of course he had. He’s a one-man horror show. A man who has arguably done even more damage to the country than his former useful idiot, Boris Johnson.
In his creased shirt and creased jacket, Dom was living his best life. The one where he got to show that he didn’t give a shit about anything or anyone. Dom has never met anyone to whom he hasn’t instinctively wanted to be rude. It took all his control not to foul-mouth the lead counsel, Hugo Keith. The inquiry room frequently crackled with passive aggression.
Here’s the thing about Dom. He doesn’t just assume that everyone else is a borderline moron, he knows that he’s the cleverest man alive. He can’t remember the last time he was wrong about anything. The trouble is that he’s just not quite as smart as he thinks he is. Time and again, he misses the flaws in his own arguments. Largely because he never listens to anyone. His own company is more than enough. He’s a hollow man.
But today was going to be a good day. Regardless. Because now he once more had the public platform he craved. A chance to be relevant. To have meaning. Recognition that he had been right all along. It would be a welcome change from his normal daily routine of bashing out 15,000 words on his laptop about whatever drivel was circulating in his brain at the time and hoping that some luckless sucker was dim enough to fork out £10 a month to read it on Substack.
Keith began by running through Dom’s CV. Spad to Michael Gove. Just about the only person in government for whom Cummings has time. But only because Mikey is merely a halfwit compared with everyone else’s confirmed status as quarterwit. A director of Vote Leave. Then for a year Johnson’s chief adviser in Downing Street. And that was it. Nothing for more than three years. Dom has hardly been rushed off his feet. Or inundated with offers.
We then moved into a few quick drive-by shootings of various cabinet ministers and cast members in No 10. AKA “fuckpigs”, “morons” and “cunts”. The words didn’t exactly trip off Keith’s tongue. Dom had never met a minister he had rated. They were all a complete waste of space. Especially Matt Hancock, Grant Shapps, Gavin Williamson and Liz Truss. Braindead liars every one of them. Weirdly, this was one of several occasions when one thought Cummings actually had a point.
But no matter. Dom had told the prime minister to reshuffle them all but that plan had died a death when everyone realised that everyone else in the Tory party was even more hopeless. The post-2019 gene pool of talent has been puddle-deep. Still, it didn’t really matter as the cabinet was merely a Potemkin simulacrum. A rubber stamp for decisions that had already been made inside No 10.
The real trouble was that everyone inside Downing Street was also totally useless. Flatlining? If only there was that much brain activity. Starting with the talentless Mark Sedwill, Simon Case and Party Marty. “Do you think that rubbishing everyone added to the air of dysfunctionality?” Keith enquired. Not even a beat. Dom was sure it hadn’t. If anything, telling people they were hopeless had motivated them.
Of course, the worst offender was the man at the top. Boris. The Trolley. The man who couldn’t keep it in his pants and was unable to concentrate on anything for more than a few nano-seconds. The giant, narcissistic, sociopathic baby. It takes one to know one. Hard to imagine anyone less suited to running a country. Let alone coping with a global pandemic. Dom seemed to want applause for this. Thanks from a grateful nation and a quasi-courtroom for having spotted Johnson’s total unsuitability for any public office. For having done his best to point him in the right direction and stopping him following a course that could have killed us all.
Only let’s think this one through. Some of us – make that many of us – realised Johnson was a dangerous liability decades ago. We saw him for what he was and yelled it from the rooftops. A man who didn’t believe in anything except his own exceptionalism. So where was Dom in all this? Dom was using Johnson first as a figurehead for the Vote Leave campaign. Then as a prime minister to get a hard Brexit done. In short, Cummings was largely responsible for landing the country with its worst ever prime minister. Or second worst, depending on how you rank Liz Truss.
Thanks for nothing. Dom should be on his knees, begging the country for forgiveness. Or at least saying sorry. But Dom – the man whose OODA loop mind is meant to be able to think of everything – can’t go there. He’s not sorry. He genuinely doesn’t care that people have died and others are struggling. It was all just a vanity project to him. He’s long since lost a moral compass. If he ever had one.
On we went. Cobra meetings. A waste of everyone’s time. Sage? Dom knew the science better than anyone on the committee. He had predicted everything. When to lock down. Everything. Just a shame he had forgotten to write most of it down. Too busy telling people what fuckpigs they were. And no it hadn’t been misogynistic to write that he would “personally handcuff” Helen MacNamara and remove her from the building because they couldn’t keep “dodging stilettos from that cunt”. It had been a term of endearment. He said that to all the women in his life.
Dom was also certain that his trip to Durham and Barnard Castle had been 100% necessary and within the rules. Nobody should dare doubt him. And yes his eyesight was much better now. Delusional to the last. A man who liked to think of himself apart from the establishment – a hero to wannabe anti-heroes everywhere – turns out to be no better than the elite he professes to despise. Because deep down he always was one of them. The rules are for the little people. Not for the great and good like himself. Because he was always going to be OK. No matter how much damage he did.
And with that he sloped away. With luck for good. Let’s just hope he didn’t terrify any kids on his way home.
Depraved New World by John Crace (Guardian Faber, £16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, pre-order your copy and save 18% at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
