“It would be a brave person who picked out the politician that has most debased themselves since the Brexit debacle exploded. But among the favourites in this crowded field would be Matt Hancock, the over-promoted health secretary who switches views so freely whenever he sees any threat to his seat at the cabinet table.
One minute he is a compassionate conservative, bitterly opposed to No Deal, valiant defender of businesses and vowing to fight on the beaches to prevent the proroguing of parliament. Then he pops up a few days later to do his latest leader’s dirty work by arguing passionately against his own previously stated views.
Hancock personifies why so many voters have lost faith in Westminster. He is a plasticine politician, moulded by others into contorted positions while posing as someone of stature. Last week he tweeted that one of his jobs was ‘to stick up for doctors’ after Jacob Rees-Mogg compared a neurologist with whom he clashed to the disgraced medical fraudster behind the measles epidemic – but only after the leader of the house was forced to apologise by a tide of outrage. Then after Amber Rudd found her backbone, he expressed sadness at her resignation but hoped ‘other One Nation Tories will stay and fight for the values we share.’Note how this ludicrous figure still dons the mantle of One Nation Conservatism when he is serving the most divisive prime minister and right-wing government in modern history. In just a few short weeks Boris Johnson has trashed constitutional norms, jeopardised the union, risked peace in Ireland and purged many of his own moderates as he completes the transformation of the Tories into the Brexit Party.”
Well, this is about “Matt” Hancock MP, not Conservatism as such, so I shall leave aside the question of how Ian Birrell can call what has happened in the UK since about 2007, mostly under “Conservative” Prime Ministers, “compassionate” or “decent”: the hounding of the sick, disabled and generally poor by part-Jap sadist Iain Dunce Duncan Smith, the Jew “lord” Freud, Esther McVey, David Gauke and others; the human skeletons and terminal cancer sufferers found “fit for work” by the politicized DWP bullies, the hate campaign by (again, part-Jew) George Osborne, and so on.
I recall seeing Ian Birrell himself on BBC or Sky News newspaper review arguing for a retention of prescription charges despite the fact that only about 1 out of 8 persons actually has to pay them anyway (the under-18s, over-60s and any people on State benefits or below a certain income level do not pay), so the amount saved by all the cross-checking and snooping is small in governmental terms. But we can leave that aside for now and return to “suited thug” Hancock (my soubriquet for him on Twitter, until the Jew-Zionist lobby had me ejected).
Hancock’s biographical details
Hancock’s parents are affluent and own a software company in his native Cheshire, where he studied at an independent school and a further education college, before going up to Oxford. He achieved a First in PPE and then, at Cambridge, an MPhil. All very impressive, or would be, were one ignorant of the fact that, thanks to award inflation in recent decades, no less than 33.9% of Oxford students get Firsts (and 93.8% get either Firsts or 2:1s!). As for a “Master’s” degree, well, hardly anyone fails, unless they drop out or die.
Matt Hancock did not die, sadly. He joined the Conservative Party, worked for his family business for a short while, then took a job “as economist” at the Bank of England. No detail available except that it concerned mortgages. How much of his time was taken up in making tea, one does not know. That lasted for about a year or so, before Hancock became, in 2005, an adviser and then Chief of Staff for George Osborne, which latter role he had until 2010.
Hancock became MP for West Suffolk, a safe Conservative seat, in 2010. In that position, and later as junior minister and then Secretary of State, gaffe-prone Hancock has been notorious for sheer nastiness and general incompetence.
“In January 2013, he was accused of dishonesty by Daybreak presenter Matt Barbet after claiming he had been excluded from a discussion about apprentices after turning up “just 30 seconds late”.[12] Barbet said Hancock knew he was “much more than a minute late” and he should have arrived half an hour beforehand to prepare for the interview. His opponent expressed surprise that “a minister whose Government berates ‘shirkers’ couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed to defend his own policy”.” [Wikipedia]
“In March 2013, Hancock initiated and assisted the development of the Conservative government’s minimum wage policy. Against internal and external party opposition, Hancock highlighted that most economic analyses demonstrate that raising the minimum wage had “no discernible effect on the employment prospects of low-wage workers”.” [Wikipedia]. Perhaps not, but Minimum Wage does ensure that workers in low-paid work are at least paid something approaching decent if very modest pay…Hancock would not understand that, having only worked for his parents and then as an office bod in the Bank of England.
“In the July 2014 cabinet reshuffle, he was promoted again, this time to Minister of State for Business and Enterprise, Minister of State for Energy, and Minister of State for Portsmouth. On 27 July he announced protection from fracking for National Parks[14]—seen as a method of reducing anger in Conservative constituencies ahead of the election.[15] Interviewed on the Radio 4 Today programme, he rejected the suggestion that fracking was highly unpopular but when challenged was unable to name a single village which supported it.” [Wikipedia]
“In October 2014, he apologized after retweeting a poem suggesting that the Labour Party was “full of queers”, describing his actions as a “total accident”.” [Wikipedia]
“He became Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General on 11 May 2015.[20] He headed David Cameron’s “earn or learn” taskforce which aimed to have every young person earning or learning from April 2017. He announced that jobless 18- to 21-year-olds would be required to do work experience as well as looking for jobs, or face losing their benefits.” [Wikipedia]
Hancock supported Remain in the 2016 EU Referendum.
“Hancock was promoted from his position as a junior minister within the Culture department to…Secretary of State during the cabinet reshuffle of January 2018.[25] he was then promoted further to Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on Monday 9 July 2018.” [Wikipedia]
“Hancock [was] the first MP to launch his own smartphone app in 2018.[27] The head of privacy rights group Big Brother Watch called the app a “fascinating comedy of errors”,[28] after the app was found to collect its users’ photographs, friend details, check-ins, and contact information.” [Wikipedia]
“In April 2019, Hancock, who had previously said the NHS would face “no privatisation on my watch”, was criticised for allowing 21 NHS contracts worth £127m to be tendered.” [Wikipedia]
Incredibly, this useless and unpleasant person, having been promoted to Cabinet only 8 years after having entered Parliament, then put himself forward as candidate for Conservative Party leader and so, by default, Prime Minister! However, he was knocked out during the first ballot, having received only 20 votes out of 314.
Now Hancock, having supported Remain until 2018, is apparently all for Boris Johnson’s “no deal” (WTO) Brexit! Many suggest that he wants to keep his feet under the Cabinet table (well, why not? You get double the pay that way…). Also, he may think that, as someone who is still under 40, he has the chance to strike out for the leadership again if he can keep in the spotlight as “senior” government minister and Conservative MP.
Some may ask why Hancock, with his Oxbridge degrees and economics background, is in the Deadhead MPs series at all. Sadly, these days, a degree is far from a guarantee of intellect, still less wisdom, and anyone who has seen Hancock’s frequently pathetic and floundering performances on television since 2010 will struggle to see the “suited thug” as anything other than a born and bred deadhead.
Much water under bridges since I penned the above assessment about Matt Hancock. He is now the main face of the Government in the coronavirus “panicdemic”. I think that I shall wait until a later date, though, before properly updating this article.
Update, 16 June 2021
It seems that events have both overtaken and vindicated me…
Boris Johnson called Matt Hancock 'totally f****** hopeless' in WhatsApp message, Cummings says https://t.co/4TCFxudy2i
Matt Hancock said "when I first asked for a list of all the elderly care homes, we did not have one". But a list does exist and it seems to have been online throughout the pandemic.
Hancock will find his political career finished now, at least in Government. Boris-idiot will not take him on again, so avoiding msm and public flak, and “Boris” can now blame Hancock for any and all “Covid” lapses since early 2020…
Matt Hancock was not offered Government preferment by either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak. He then decided to let down his constituents by accepting a reputed £400,000 to spend a month in Australia on the I’m A Celebrity show. That despite the fact that he was (and at time of writing still is) being paid a full MP salary, plus Parliamentary expenses.
Hancock has lost the Conservative Party whip, which I doubt will be restored, meaning that, as of the next General Election, his political career is at an end.
West Suffolk is a very safe Conservative seat [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Suffolk_(UK_Parliament_constituency)], which would mean, in the unlikely case that Hancock is able to regain the whip, that he might be one of a relatively small cadre of Conservative Party MPs surviving what is likely to be a political massacre at the next general election.
Likelihood is that Hancock will not stand at the next general election, but will either go into business of some sort, or perhaps get into TV work, if his lack of both integrity and personality is not an insuperable handicap.
Update, 7 March 2023
Many will now be aware that Hancock decided to “grift” more money by having the well-known or notorious journalist Isabel Oakeshott ghost (-write) a book of his “Covid” period memoirs. The results have been explosive, after Ms. Oakeshott revealed thousands of messages among the Westminster supposed “elite”, mocking “ordinary people” and admitting to wanting to “scare the pants off” the public.
Hancock has announced his departure from the House of Commons (as I predicted would happen).
Hancock’s book has bombed, in fact. He may well have been given a large advance, though.
Politically, Hancock is finished, and he is now scrabbling to be given immunity from suit or prosecution.
Another System politician who deserves, at the very least, a good kicking.
JUST IN: UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock threatened to block funding for a new centre for disabled children if a resistant Member of Parliament refused to support his lockdown.https://t.co/VaNEmp6ETIpic.twitter.com/UtBm7cutAO
Hancock did not contest the West Suffolk constituency at GE 2024. His successor, Nick Timothy, managed to hold on, with 34.3% of the vote (Labour 27.2%, Reform UK 20.8%).
It seems that the intellectual power behind the Boris Johnson throne is one Dominic Cummings, someone who only came to my attention recently. His new eminence put me in mind of a few similar people in the recent and not so recent past.
Brendan Bracken
Churchill had the egregious Brendan Bracken as his adviser and amanuensis. Bracken was, as such people often are, very strange indeed. He was born into modest but not poor circumstances in Ireland, drifted around Australia, attended Sedbergh School at age 19 (though claiming to be just 15), paying the fees himself, then left after one term, having acquired what the later KGB would have called a “legend” as an Anglo-Irishman who had attended a well-known English school (he let people believe that he had been there for years).
Armed with the Sedbergh “old school tie”, Bracken became a schoolmaster at Bishop’s Stortford College in 1921, but by 1922 was a magazine publisher and editor in London. He became wealthy quite rapidly. Puzzling. Here was a young man who had presumably saved some money while in Australia, and may have had a part-share in whatever his father left, but all the same Bracken’s swift rise to wealth is a puzzle. Still, there it is.
Having attached himself to Churchill, Bracken was instrumental at the vital moment when Chamberlain resigned in 1940:
” When Bracken became aware of Churchill’s agreement to nominate Lord Halifax, he convinced Churchill that the Labour Party would indeed support him as Chamberlain’s successor, and that Lord Halifax’s appointment would hand certain victory to Hitler. Bracken advised Churchill tactically to say nothing when the three met to arrange the succession. After a deafening silence during which Churchill was expected to nominate Halifax, the latter obligingly ruled himself out and Churchill was put forward as Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, having avoided any appearance of disloyalty to Chamberlain.” [Wikipedia, and see Notes, below].
Thus this odd man “from nowhere” was not only present at the pivotal moment, but can be said to have altered the course of the Second World War on the strategic level. Had Churchill not become Prime Minister, Britain would have agreed peace with the German Reich in 1940. The whole history of Europe and indeed the world was thus altered in its course by this now-forgotten man (forgotten by the public, at least).
Bracken was MP for Paddington North (1929-1945) and for Bournemouth (1945-1951). He was Churchill’s PPS from 1940, later promoted to Minister of Information (1941-1945) and was briefly First Lord of the Admiralty in 1945. He was one of the chiefs of the Political Warfare Executive. He was elevated as a viscount in 1952. He was the publisher of, inter alia, the Financial Times, The Economist and History Today.
Bracken was rumoured to have been Churchill’s illegitimate progeny, though this seems to have been a myth not discouraged by Bracken himself. The viscounty granted was hereditary, but Bracken was unmarried and without issue. He died in 1958.
Was this the story only of a remarkably talented self-made businessman and politician or was there more to it? There are hints of the then-concealed New World Order about it all. We shall probably never know.
Steve Hilton
[As with Cummings –see below— Hilton felt the need to display his “I’m an off the wall maverick genius” persona by wearing beachwear or surf dude getup to Downing Street…]
Wikipedia says of Steve Hilton the following:
“Hilton is the son of Hungarian immigrants whose original surname was Hircsák[7] (which some sources spell “Hircksac”),[8] who fled their home during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. They came to Britain, initially claiming asylum, and anglicised their name to Hilton. Steve Hilton’s father, István, had been goaltender for the Hungarian national ice hockey team and was considered one of the top ice hockey players in Europe in the 1930s.[7][9] After arriving in Britain, his parents initially worked in catering at Heathrow Airport. They divorced when Steve was five years old[7] leading to what he has described as a struggle and great financial hardship; his mother worked in a shoe store to earn the little money they had, and the two lived in a cold, damp basement apartment. He won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital School in Horsham before studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at New College, Oxford.”
“After graduating, Hilton worked at Conservative Central Office, where he came to know David Cameron and Rachel Whetstone, his future wife and Senior Vice-President of Policy and Communications for Uber.[11] He liaised with the party’s advertising firm, Saatchi and Saatchi, and was praised by Maurice Saatchi, who remarked, “No one reminds me as much of me when young as Steve.”[8] During this time Hilton bought the “New Labour, New Danger” demon eyes poster campaign[12] for the Conservative’s pre-general election campaign in 1996, which won an award from the advertising industry’s Campaign magazine at the beginning of 1997.[13] The Conservatives went on to experience their worst election defeat for more than half a century, with some journalists speculating that the poster contrasted unfavourably with Labour’s more positive campaign.[14] In 2005, Hilton lost out to future Secretary of State for EducationMichael Gove in the selection process for the Surrey Heath constituency.”
“Hilton talked of the need to “replace” the traditionally minded grassroots membership of the Conservative Party, which he saw as preventing the party from embracing a more metropolitan attitude on social issues.”
So he was at first, in the 1990s, little better than a gopher, but then he met his wife, Rachel Whetstone. Who is she? She is described in Wikipedia as having been head of communications for Uber taxis. For a number of years until 2015, she was in a similar position at Google. She has more recently joined Netflix.
“In February 2013, Whetstone was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4.[4] Whetstone has been featured on PRWeek’s Power List several times, most recently in 2016 at number 14.” [Wikipedia]
“Whetstone is married to Steve Hilton, whom she met after an affair with Lord Astor (stepfather to Samantha Cameron, wife of former Prime Minister David Cameron) in the lead-up to the 2005 election. Cameron is no longer on speaking terms with Whetstone or Hilton.” [Wikipedia]
More interestingly, Rachel Whetstone’s grandfather was one Antony Fisher, not much known to the public, though extremely influential behind the scenes:
“Sir Antony George Anson FisherAFC (28 June 1915 – 8 July 1988), nicknamed AGAF, was a British businessman and think tank founder. He participated in the formation of various libertarian organisations during the second half of the twentieth century, including the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Atlas Network. Through Atlas, he helped establish up to 150 other institutions worldwide.”
Antony Fisher may have been at least part-Jew, and was certainly a Zionist, pro-Israel to the hilt.
Hilton was thought by many to be half-mad. He was lucky to escape with a caution and a small fine after having assaulted someone on a railway platform in England. He had been arrested after the assault and after shouting “wanker!” at staff and police. At the time, this useless creature was being paid £200,000 a year from public funds. There were other incidents of aggressive behaviour during his time at No.10.
“Andy Coulson, the former communications chief who was later jailed over phone hacking, recalled recently in the Telegraph: “I would ask, ‘So how does that work then?’ If I got an answer at all, it was along the lines of, ‘It’ll be fine – just you see.’ That was mildly irritating, as it was my team who would have to get out and sell the latest product from Steve’s dream factory.”” [The Guardian]
“Hilton’s rightwing, free-market ideas certainly infuriated Lib Dems who worked with him, as chronicled in David Laws’s book about the coalition. One Lib Dem former adviser said: “I was unfortunate enough to spend some time in Steve’s thought wigwam and it was not a pretty place. I remember him suggesting we should scrap maternity laws and invest in cloud-busting technology to improve the British weather. I certainly do not remember at any time him raising any points about the immigration policy he is now criticising.”” [The Guardian]
Hilton accomplished nothing, certainly nothing concrete, at Downing Street, and eventually decamped to the USA, where he was, laughably, taken on as some kind of visiting “professor” at Stanford:
“In March 2012, Downing Street announced that Hilton would be a “visiting scholar” at Stanford University‘s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies for a year.[21] His last memo concerned the advocacy of severe cuts in the number of civil servants in the United Kingdom[22] and further welfare cuts.” [Wikipedia]
At time of writing, Steve Hilton is on the American TV network, Fox News, as a talking head, and is apparently a Trump partisan.
“Had Bernie Sanders been the Democratic nominee, Hilton “probably would have supported him”. Hilton says he is not really a conservative or a liberal: “It’s hard to pin me down because I’m a bit of Bernie Sanders, a bit of Rand Paul, bit of John Kasich.” He’s pro-Trump simply because he was the candidate most likely to “shake things up”” [The Guardian]
Someone who actively likes and promotes chaos, in fact, just like Dominic Cummings [see below]
Steve Hilton, in other words, like the others examined here, is connected with cosmopolitan finance-capital and its intellectual superstructure of “think tanks” (which have proliferated over the years) and with supposed “institutes”, mostly carrying the same sort of message: internationalism, multikulti “get rich quick”-ism, destruction of tradition, race and culture, combined with State repression of those without money.
Dominic Cummings
[above, Dominic Cummings: note the “I’m Too Important To Wear A Tie Or A Jacket” affectation, as with Steve “Hilton”]
As stated at the start of this blog post, I know of Cummings only what I have read. The links are either posted here below or are available easily via Google.
One thing that did interest me was the Wikipedia statement, taken from a biography of Michael Gove, that “Cummings speaks Russian and ‘is a Russophile'”. It seems that he tried to start an airline with the single route line of Samara (a large city on the Volga) to Vienna, an interesting choice of route. We are told on Wikipedia that: “After university, Cummings moved to Russia from 1994 to 1997, working on various projects. In one Russian venture, he worked for a group attempting to set up an airline connecting Samara in southern Russia to Vienna; however, the venture fell foul of the KGB, and was abandoned after only one flight.“
Well, the “KGB” bit is wrong in exact terms, because the KGB was disbanded (reorganized) in 1991. The bulk of the “internal” work of the old KGB was given to the “FSK” which later became the FSB. As to why the revamped FSK/FSB would want to interfere in the activities of a foreign or foreign-connected airline, I wonder. There are, and have been for 2-3 decades now, numerous foreign airlines operating in the former Soviet Union, flying between Russia and other states.
In the 1990s, new “babyflots” (bits of the old Aeroflot) were emerging all the time, as were ad hoc operations such as the German airline “Luftbrucke” (Air Bridge), which transported tens of thousands of “Volksdeutsche” from Kazakhstan and Siberia to new lives in the reunified Germany (those people were mostly the descendants of Germans invited to Russia by Russian tsars, notably Catherine the Great, then deported East by Stalin). Luftbrucke, if I recall aright, also flew from Samara, as also from a host of cities in Western Siberia and Kazakhstan, such as Semipalatinsk.
I find the history of Cummings interesting. He graduated from Oxford in 1994 aged 22-23, his degree being in Ancient and Modern History. The very same year he moved to Russia “where he worked on various projects” including the idea “to set up a new airline”.
I admit that I myself have never set up an airline, but I know that you cannot do it without rather a lot of money, even in the conditions of post-collapse Sovietism (I myself was briefly in Moscow in 1993 and also dealt with legal and business matters in Russia and Kazakhstan for several years).
Cummings is said to be the son of an oil rig project manager and a special needs teacher. There is no suggestion of any heavy family wealth. Cummings only left university in 1994, yet by —at latest— 1997, so 0-3 years later, was setting up an airline? In fact, how did he get into Russian-oriented business anyway, with no obvious connections or personal monies. He is able to speak Russian, though. That too raises questions.
I lived in Almaty, Kazakhstan for a year (1996-1997), meeting dozens if not hundreds (and over the years, certainly hundreds) of businessmen, lawyers etc doing work in the various ex-Soviet republics. While most of the diplomats I met spoke at least some Russian, the vast majority of businessmen and lawyers encountered knew no Russian at all really (that was true of both British and Americans). Certainly unable to undertake even simple discussions. I even met some unable to order simple food and drink.
So Cummings leaves university in the UK, where he studied ancient and modern history, somehow speaks Russian (or learns it on the ground), and is at once involved with business activities which seem to go beyond being a mere gopher for others. I have to say that I wonder whether Cummings was up to something other than just being a British graduate drifting about and getting into Russian business speculations almost by chance. Maybe the Russian security people were right to be suspicious of him, as is suggested in his Wikipedia entry.
Anyway, he is now considered to be Boris Idiot’s eminence grise, and looks it (meaning “grey”, if not particularly eminent). In fact, despite being only 47, he looks 10+ years older than me, and I am now 62. His political career is summarized here:
I have to say that I agree with his view of many of the leading political and official figures (he described Iain Dunce Duncan Smith as “incompetent”, for example).
It seems that Cummings married a lady of the North Country gentry who is or was Deputy Editor of the Spectator. They live in Islington, in what the Daily Mail is pleased to call a “£1.6 million house” (though in London, what does that mean? I lived for years in a house in Little Venice now (over)valued at £4 million! Madness). Other details about Cummings are few.
“What is clear is that this character is right now in the maelstrom of chaos and action that he loves so much. A defender quipped that he’ll be thrilled with upheaval – it’s the only way he sees people being forced into action. His friend once heard him quote Lenin: “The worse the better.” [Reaction magazine]
The Prophets of Dystopia
These “advisers” (of whom I have selected a mere few from a larger pool) and their connected “think tanks” etc are, even when some of their critique of society is justified, basically destructive. The same applies to the people themselves. Admittedly, Brendan Bracken left a less obviously destructive legacy, but then, after the huge and unnecessary war which he, from the shadows, did so much to bring about, what more need he do to be adjudged a negative force?
Look at Steve Hilton, Dominic Cummings etc. Where are their real achievements? Leaves blown away by the wind. These people may themselves have acquired riches, but only or mainly because they married wealthy wives, then used their own political attachment and profile to become highly-prized TV, radio, press and online “gurus” . They themselves have not established anything solid, whether in commerce, industry, academia, the arts, the sciences, charitable work or anywhere else. They are creatures created from the chaos and decadence in society. They prosper from the decadence and weakness of the political system in the UK and attach themselves to stupid, weak, posturing politicians vainly trying to reach to statesmanship, people such as David Cameron-Levita and Boris-Idiot. They are a symptom of dark days ahead. Social nationalism must rise up to exterminate evil and to found a better and better-organized society.
Is it fanciful to compare the sliding society we now have (look at the past few days…) and the prominence of these odd characters such as Hilton and Cummings, whose academic and patchy work histories are at best underwhelming, with the sliding Russia of the last few years before the Revolution(s) of 1917? Perhaps, but in late-Tsarist Russia too the government, civil service, certainly the politicians, were paralyzed, helpless to do anything positive, and so the influence grew of odd characters: tarot practitioners, mystics and occultists, fortune-tellers of all kinds, persons believed to have arcane knowledge and unorthodox ways to make politics work via persuasion and peculiar ideas and methods. The starets (he was never a monk or priest) Rasputin was only the most important of a whole host.
In fact, I agree with some of what Cummings has said:
“We should stop selecting leaders from a subset of Oxbridge egomaniacs with a humanities degree...” That is true, though I have nothing against degrees in the humanities, but the whole idea of the “generalist” (almost always armed with a degree from Oxford or Cambridge) has blighted UK political, cultural and even industrial life for 70 years, perhaps 100 years. The Soviet Union tended toward the same behaviour (the politically-OK “Man From Moscow” who could “direct” anything from a tyre factory to a Young Pioneer camp or the building of the Moscow Metro), and look what happened there (the Metro in Moscow admittedly being a —rare— success of the Soviet system).
Of course, the worst single example of the generalist might be Cummings’ present employer, Boris-idiot, who has proven that he is incapable of doing anything properly, but who can do it while quoting a bit of rote-learned Ancient Greek, or using an English word no-one else has ever heard of (he must trawl the OED for those silly words, I expect…what a complete waste of space he is!). As the journalist writes,
“All evidence goes out the window. The grandest ever Oxbridge egomaniac of them all (with not even a very good humanities degree, as it happens) is seeing only the flickering shadows on the news on the wall. It is not even day 14 and already we have beaten a hyper-accelerated march to the world of crap policy for political gain.“
The journalist continues, citing a recent Times article by Cummings:
“Elsewhere, in that same Times article, we read: “We must train aspirant leaders very differently so they have the skills and experience of managing complex projects.””
“And here he is, bringing in policies that would make Norman Tebbit look enlightened, working for a leader whose skill at “managing complex projects” so far extends to some rolling windowless sauna buses, a cable car to nowhere, and a ghost garden bridge that may or may not take you to a demented airport that has never and will never be built.“
Seems that my blog was (again) prescient, if I say so myself: not a day or even part of a day goes by now without someone publishing something in the newspapers about Dominic Cummings (though Steve “Hilton” is old news and Brendan Bracken ancient history).
'Sources close to the prime minister tell me that he cried when he heard the news' – fascinating @jennirsl insight into the moment Boris Johnson heard his brother was resigning in the national interest https://t.co/LUNDmcPJeR
“Through his system, as yet unexplained – “I will go into what I think this vision could be and how to do it another day” – he will turn a nation of average people into one of the most successful countries in the world. He will sweep away the suffocating postwar mainframes of politics, and build something capable of withstanding the unknown crises ahead. Or so he would wish. In truth, he may be little more than a survivalist in the woods, soldering wires together in the belief he is saving us all.
Is Dominic Cummings a visionary or a fool? The remarkable fact is that the Conservative Party has risked its future, and the country’s, on which one Cummings turns out to be.” [Harry Lambert, writing in The New Statesman]
Dominic Cummings dresses down (even more) in Downing Street on the day of the Saturday sitting of the Commons (today). Not sure whether the bimbo is Boris Johnson’s girlfriend or a lookalike.
All he lacks is a few copies of The Big Issue and a plastic cup for tips. Oh, no, wait, he’s holding the cup…
[Update, 28 March 2026: Well, I have now identified the young woman seen with Cummings in that photo. Not Carrie Johnson (as she now is), but Cleo Watson, a government Special Adviser (SpAd) at the time of the photo; she is from an affluent background in Herefordshire, has written 2 novels of the romans-a-clef type, and is now around 35 years of age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleo_Watson.]
Update, 3 November 2019
I very much doubt that Dominic Cummings works or worked for Russian Intelligence…au contraire.
Another in the series of vignettes about my perhaps slightly unusual life at the English Bar. The disaster recounted below occurred in early 1994.
A children’s author called Lemony Snicket wrote a book called A Series of Unfortunate Events. I once represented someone who had suffered a series of such events.
A Nigerian, X, had been born in the UK where his affluent parents had been on holiday. A few weeks after the birth, the family returned to Nigeria, where X went to school. It was then decided to send X to university overseas. An American university, I think in the Midwest, was chosen and X attended that institution for a few years. During that time, X also engaged, like many Nigerians, in business activities of some sort. Unfortunately, as a result of these, he was charged and convicted of a Federal offence of fraud, subsequently serving a one-year sentence in Federal prison.
X had entered the USA on a visa which was invalidated once X was convicted of a Federal offence. Thus, when the year in prison had finished, X was incarcerated in another Federal detention facility as a person facing deportation. X wanted to appeal his conviction and so resisted deportation by filing an appeal against that too. He was moved to a Federal facility in Louisiana. According to his own account, the place was a “concentration camp” amid heat and mosquitos in which place, every day, he was offered the chance to be released if only he would agree to drop his immigration appeal and return to Nigeria. He resisted these invitations for some time, but eventually, worn down by the conditions, conceded.
It was at this point that it was discovered that X had been born in London. The US authorities thenceforth refused to deal with the Nigerian Consulate on his behalf and took him under guard to the UK Consulate in Houston, Texas, apparently the nearest one with authority to deal with the matter. He was issued with a British passport and was then sent to the UK, a country he had only seen as a newborn baby.
X said that he had never been violent, but only argued with the US officials accompanying him, to the effect that he wished to go to Nigeria, not the UK. As a result, X travelled from Houston to Gatwick handcuffed throughout the flight, also forced to wear a weighted leather device attached to one leg, and with two guards guarding him.
X’s travails continued after landing. All other passengers were disembarked, then a police car was driven up to the aircraft and steps brought. X was told to get up but could not, by reason of his leg having gone to sleep. The handcuffs and leg weight were removed. He was then manhandled by the guards and the British police off the aircraft, then literally dragged down the aircraft steps and into the waiting police car. It got worse from there.
Having (according to his own evidence) not wanted to be sent to the UK, X was now held at Gatwick police station and then an immigration detention centre near Portsmouth on the basis that he had no right to be in the UK and was, notwithstanding the recently-issued British passport, an illegal immigrant! After two weeks in British immigration detention, X was driven back to Gatwick police station, told “OK, you have been checked out and you do have the right to be in the UK”, whereupon he was given the bus fare to Crawley, the nearest town, and released. Thus X found himself in the UK with only pennies in his pocket, nowhere to stay, knowing no-one and nothing.
X eventually managed to get some kind of emergency help with housing from the local council but wanted to move to London. He left Crawley for various reasons and went to London. He applied for housing to seven London boroughs, most of which refused even to consider his request (he claimed). This was the basis for his wish, over a year later, to seek judicial review of the decisions to refuse him and/or the refusal to consider his request(s) at all. I have no idea why his Nigerian family did not help him out with money or air tickets. Maybe the American events had estranged them.
X in person was irritating: an obsessive, fast-talking West African who had obviously decided to stay in the UK and to extract as much benefit as possible. Having said that, I thought that he had been treated very badly both in the US and UK. His case seemed at least arguable. His solicitor was a small Nigerian, almost a pygmy in size, who did not inspire confidence.
On the morning of the “application to apply” of the 2-stage process, I was at the Royal Courts of Justice, my by-then-usual stamping ground, in order to appear before Mr. Justice Laws (later a Lord Justice of Appeal). I had invited an old friend, an elegant European aristocratic lady, to see me in action and then, after my hoped-for initial triumph, to join me at lunch in Hall at nearby Lincoln’s Inn.
Greek tragedy placed hubris as inviting Nemesis. The courtroom was quite crowded with other barristers coming on after me. At first, things went well, despite the fact that, instead of neatly-organized files, the pygmy solicitor’s filing system appeared to be a large black bin-bag. The judge was listening, even perhaps slightly nodding at times (or was that wishful thinking on my part?). Then I struck the reef:
“Mr. Millard, where is the document from each council refusing Mr X?”
“My Lord, there are no such documents. Part of the case of the Applicant is that he requested a written decision in each case and was refused even that.”
“Mr. Millard, I think that I have to see something in writing.”
It was at this point that I felt a tug on my barrister’s black gown. Turning slightly, I saw the pygmy waving a piece of paper excitedly, smiling manically and nodding like a mechanized Victorian toy. Rashly, very rashly, I replied to the judge,
“I in fact appear to be in a position to assist your Lordship”
and only then looked at the paper. Big mistake. It was blank. I turned it over. Blank. I turned it over again, not quite believing this. I must have looked like a character out of a Laurel and Hardy film. I caught, peripherally, the incredulous looks of a couple of the waiting barristers. Sadly, no flying saucer appeared to beam me up and away from it all. I had to say something.
“I regret, my Lord, that in fact I am not in a position to assist your Lordship.”
Thus it was that Mr Justice Laws, later Lord Justice Laws, turned that colour, a mixture of pink, red and purple, that I now call Judicial Livid. His final remarks, in refusing our application, were curt (though not insulting; they did not have to be…).
On the way out of the courtroom and into the corridor, my guest, swathed in furs and jewels, and whom I had hoped would see me achieve a successful result, sympathetically said, “poor Ian”…
“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. … They have their exits and their entrances, and in his lifetime a man will play many parts, his life separated into seven acts.“
[Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7]
Update, 30 August 2023
I see that, since my last update of this blog post, it has received more hits, including a single hit today.
Life is famously short, even when not “nasty” and/or “brutish” [etc], as Hobbes put it in Leviathan. A mere (?) 28 or 29 years ago, there I was, highly embarrassed before the (seemingly) all-powerful and very irritated High Court judge. Now, I am where I am, and that judge is no longer even on the Earth. All things pass…
Incidentally, I only now notice that that judge, Laws, was a mere 11 years older than me, having been born in 1945. I had thought much older. On the sole occasion when I appeared before him, I thought (or would have assumed) that he was at least 20 years older, with his almost circular red (indeed, livid) face surmounted by judicial short wig.
From 2005 through to 2008, I worked as a practising barrister in England, but spent about half my time in Brittany, commuting on a twice or thrice-monthly basis by sea and air. I did not keep in close touch with UK political affairs. I used my TV in France only for DVDs and videos and had no Sky service. The brief triumph of BNP candidates Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons in the European elections was heard by me via BBC World Service and Radio 4 (which can usually be picked up on or near the coast).
In mid-2009, having given up Bar practice in early 2008, I returned to the UK. I started to take great interest in British political life. One aspect surprised me particularly: the rise to –brief– prominence of persons whose connection to politics was slight. Not so much “commentators” (their usual self-styling) as pseudo-commentators and pseudo-“activists”. One of these was a young woman called Alexandra Swann (on Twitter, @alexandralswann, not to be confused with @alexandraswann, an American blogger). She was (for her “15 minutes of fame”) a UKIP spokesperson:
and the msm started to take an interest in her. For a few months she seemed to be on TV constantly, pontificating (albeit risibly) on social welfare, employment, all sorts of things. UKIP gave her 10 minutes in which to speak at its 2012 Conference:
The Guardian –of all outlets!– gave Alexandra Swann op-ed space, calling her “the new face of UKIP”. She was also called, by others,”the future face of UK politics”!
In fact, she described herself as “libertarian” and had been an office-holder at one time in “Conservative Future”, the more or less defunct Con youth wing (the Scottish section even had to cancel its conference, when only 6 people applied for tickets!). Like so many youthful “libertarians” (she was 23 years old in 2012), she had a wealthy father to help her out should she be unable to stand on her own two feet in the approved Ayn Rand manner. Indeed, she was, at the time, still a student, working on a politics-oriented PhD at Sussex.
In fact, it was around that time that UKIP started to split internally between the members who were basically pseudo-nationalist Conservatives (fiscal Conservatives who were anti-mass immigration) and the more social-national UKIPpers who might (and did, briefly) appeal to voters in the Labour heartlands of the North.
She was so politically-unaware that she thought that UKIP should ditch its anti-immigration stance and become a party of Ayn Rand “libertarians” (liberty for the wealthy and austerity/repression for the poor, as I see it). She was not alone in holding such attitudes: some who held elected positions were not far from her in this; one could mention Daniel Hannan MEP, Douglas Carswell MP etc as “fiscally conservative, socially-liberal”. Those far more seasoned (not to say educated and intelligent) figures likewise at least pretended to think that a “small-state” national conservatism could be popular. Needless to say, the idea is anathema to me.
Since that time, Alexandra Swann has retreated into private life and (her tweets have recounted) has even had a job or two, as well as becoming, presumably on a small scale (via family money? I do not know, but how else?), a buy-to-let parasite or “residential real estate investor” if you prefer. I should add that the lady blocks me on Twitter, though I have never tweeted to her. She must have disagreed with a tweet of mine which was critical of her smug “entitled” attitudes…
What I am writing about here is not this one now-obscure person, Alexandra Swann, as such (she was, in the end, too silly and inconsistent a figure to be taken seriously even in Britain’s decadent political/msm milieu), but as a symptom of a time when the mainstream media promoted almost anyone, especially those thought to be travelling along the “welfare reform”, “austerity” line. A pretty face and youth helped but were not essential. There were others after 2010 who were trying to become media talking heads and/or political stars. Some even became MPs.
There was Louise Mensch, who caught the wave early. David Cameron-Levita-Schlumberger placed her on the “A” List, as a result of which she was briefly an MP, though she resigned for “personal reasons” later, by which time various stories about her behaviour had surfaced, not least the fact that (as she admitted), “hard drugs” had “messed with” her brain…
Louise Mensch could be seen on TV constantly in 2010-2011, supporting the evil policies of the “Conservative” government of Cameron-Levita (and not only on Sky News, but Newsnight, at the time still a programme of some weight).
Since her resignation as MP, Louise Mensch has tried and failed at various commercial social media and Internet activities and was for a few years a columnist for the Sun “newspaper”, until she “left” in 2017. I always wondered why Murdoch paid her (assuming that it was a paid job). It seemed bizarre that a woman who constantly gets basic facts wrong could be a columnist even for the Sun. She still tweets, though: prolifically and sometimes –though unwittingly– funnily. She blocks me on Twitter…
I should add that Louise Mensch has been gunning for me for years on Twitter and elsehow. She loved it when the Jew Zionists managed to get me disbarred in 2016 (I suppose that she thought that I was still in practice and that I would suffer as a consequence) and (together with or parallel to the same Zionists) tweeted directly to me that she was going to get me chucked out of the New York Bar too. She is married to a wealthy Jew. Her desire to extract the “pound of flesh” from me was patent!
For the record, the New York Bar does not police its members’ opinions on politics (there’s this thing called the U.S. Constitution…) and I never heard anything more about the complaint by Louise Mensch against me (if it was ever made) or that supposedly made by some London Jews (eg one Goldberg QC, who threatened me with the same in the newspapers). In fact, I have never practised in New York anyway, and whether I belong to the NY Bar is a matter of supreme unconcern to me.
There were many others around 2010 (in fact from 2009) and in the succeeding years who were to be seen on Sky News and BBC News newspaper reviews, on Question Time and BBC Daily Politics. Some found niche positions in small publications or online, but most have almost faded from view. One is the egregious Caroline Criado-Perez. Like several others of the type now under discussion, she seems to have come from a rather wealthy background, so it scarcely matters to her from an everyday point of view that she dropped out of university in the first year. Her Wikipedia entry –pretty obviously mainly drafted by her– mentions her “working in digital marketing for several years”…well, it may be true…(ha).
It seems that some silly and malicious people emailed or tweeted to Caroline Criado-Perez in a threatening way (three were even convicted), allowing her to claim a kind of pseudo-martyr status for a while. I personally have no objection at all to women of note (no pun intended) being depicted on paper money, but to agitate for that (which had already been done anyway) hardly counts as a career…
Caroline Criado-Perez had an OBE bestowed upon her by David Cameron-Levita for her “activism” in getting Jane Austen on a banknote (though Elizabeth Fry had been on banknotes for years). She has now agitated for a statue of a Suffragist in Parliament Square. She still seems to regard herself as a kind of full-time or other “activist” though her Wikipedia entry says that in 2013 she was “in process of completing” a Master’s degree in Gender Studies. Roll over, Einstein! I have no idea whether she will now get a CBE for having asked that a statue be erected; maybe not.
I have never tweeted to Caroline Criado-Perez, but she must have seen me criticize her on Twitter or, more likely, not take her seriously on Twitter, because she too blocks me…I have only seen her a couple of times on TV and she seems quite pleasant in her interview manner, but “pleasant” alone just does not cut it in these times. She is a one-trick pony who is just not at all interesting.
What strikes me about the three women above is how adept, at least initially, they were at self-promotion. Also, how, in the end, self-promotion is not enough. 2010 and 2012 were different to 2018. Times are becoming serious. Yes, you could get on TV shows if you were a pretty girl willing to address (however shallowly) important issues; yes, you could maybe become an MP if you had the right help and image; yes, you could get an OBE for something like demanding that a certain type of person be put on a banknote. However, that’s where it finishes. The pretence of gravity is not the same, ultimately, as gravity. If you are shallow, or ignorant, or a one-trick pony, the more serious times will not carry you along but will dump you as irrelevant.
My intention in writing the above was not to criticize those mentioned but to characterize a time, a time that is pretty much gone now. The new time demands serious people with the ability to think and act seriously. This is no longer the time of the dilettante.
Later Note
“[Louise] Mensch is diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which made her realise she was “self medicating” with wine for stress….[103] She has also commented, on BBC Question Time during a debate on calls to decriminalise hard drugs, about taking hard drugs in her 20s; she subsequently told the press: “It is something that I regret incredibly, that, in my youth, I messed with my brain. I said ‘we all do stupid things when we are young’. It’s had long-term mental health effects on me.”
[Wikipedia]
Update, 25 January 2020
Nearly two years have passed since I wrote the above. The times have indeed become serious, but I have been astonished to note that System politics has founds niches for dilettantes almost as absurd as the three mentioned in the article. The Prime Minister is now Boris-idiot, dilettante sans pareil, and his top adviser is Dominic Cummings, another dilettante, who has asked that “weirdos and misfits” apply to “reform” the Civil Service. 35,000 have, we are told, applied. The UK is now going down so fast that it is dizzying.
Labour? Same: Jess Phillips for one, tipped (incredibly) as leader at some point (I doubt it, not if Labour is going to survive).
Update, 17 March 2023
None of the three women mentioned has come back into prominence, except that Louise Mensch has continued to tweet complete rubbish (including anti-Russia propaganda); she has been dumped by her now ex-husband, a wealthy American Jew; she still, it seems, lives in New York. As far as I can see, her tweets about me from years ago have all been deleted, and I myself was expelled from Twitter in 2018 after a long campaign by a pack of Jews.
Ian Robert Millard 