WHO BROKE BRITAIN?
His Brexit triumph paved the way for the rise of Nigel Farage and Reform
Who broke Britain? Welcome to The i Paper’s new opinion series in which our range of experts tackle this question and identify the individuals whose decisions caused the country’s biggest problems.
• David Cameron: The unlikely villain who casually killed the Conservative Party
• Tony Blair: A sincere deceiver who broke Britain’s trust on migration
• Andrew broke our bond with the monarchy and put the Royal Family at risk
Dominic Cummings has a big brain. Those who worked with him suggest he also has an ego of similar volume. This combination is not unusual in politics but Cummings’ extraordinary talent for disruption meant his wrecking-ball abilities are unparalleled in recent British political history. Unfortunately he has never been able to translate this talent for disruption into a similar talent for building anything that has definitively made Britain better.
Cummings was most obviously the undisputed mastermind of the Vote Leave Brexit campaign of 2016. His success in Britain breaking with the EU was bad enough in itself. But it also damaged the unity of the United Kingdom, upended the Conservative party and helped push a succession of failed Tory leaders into Downing Street. The party of Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher is right now scrabbling at around 20 per cent in opinion polls, about the same as the Greens.
Cummings is therefore a key player in breaking 21st century Britain, breaking Boris Johnson and breaking the Conservative party along the way.
A brief overview of his scorecard makes for painful reading. An overwhelming majority of voters say Brexit has failed. Cummings’ other broken creation, Boris Johnson as prime minister, meant Johnson is described most frequently in voter surveys as a “liar”, “incompetent” and “untrustworthy”.
Occasionally for Cummings there are flashes of self-realisation if not guilt.
In a 2021 BBC interview he admitted Brexit may have been a mistake, but did not apologise. Despite the resulting Brexitshambles he listed his success in claiming Vote Leave had “taken over” the Conservative party to “disrupt” the UK’s power structure and “bend it to something that’s different”.
Well, yes, “different” is correct. Anyone remember Liz Truss? But is anything post-Brexit actually better? Cummings replied: “Anyone who says they’re sure about questions like that has got a screw loose.”
The key architect of Brexit is actually lecturing us all that anyone convinced Brexit is a success is certifiably insane. Odd that he didn’t mention that back in 2016.
But Dom the Disruptor didn’t stop there. Let’s take a more detailed look at his record. It’s not pretty. Dom’s next cunning plan was to push Boris Johnson into Downing Street on 24 July 2019. Within a month there were the beginnings of a constitutional crisis. Johnson – advised by Cummings – then advised HM Queen Elizabeth II to prorogue Parliament until the State Opening on 14 October 2019, the longest prorogation in modern times.
The wheeze was designed to avoid MPs scrutinising Johnson’s shambolic Brexit “plans”. The Supreme Court’s verdict was scathing, that “this long prorogation significantly interfered with the constitutional principles of parliamentary sovereignty and parliamentary accountability.”
Dom’s disruption – surprise! – yet again had no positive outcome, except perhaps the subsequent purge of Conservative MPs who dared to suggest the Johnson-Cummings plans were disastrous. That potential rebellion led to the snap election of December 2019, again pushed by the Cummings team to “get Brexit done” while still being magnificently hazy as to what Brexit might actually mean.
The Cummings-Johnson Conservatives won 365 seats and their highest share of the popular vote since Margaret Thatcher in 1979. The “Red Wall” of safe Labour seats – where many Labour supporters had voted for Brexit in 2016 – went blue. Disruption triumphed, but, yet again, the problem was what constructively might follow.
There was trouble in Northern Ireland over the need for Irish border checks. British holidaymakers, truckers, and others had to get used to a return to the old European bureaucracy of passport checks, long queues at airports and for exporters an endless stream of paperwork. There were even checks on sandwiches you could take on a ferry to Calais, one of the micro-annoyances never mentioned on the Cummings Brexit bus.
The high point of Boris Johnson’s election triumph however also marked the beginning of the end for Dom the Disruptor. He was pushed out less than a year later in November 2020 after allegedly briefing against Johnson himself, and following, shall we say, Cummings’ more relaxed attitude to Covid rules than the rest of us mere mortals. Cummings drove from London to his parents home in Durham with his wife and child in early 2020.
On 12 April he drove 25 miles to Barnard Castle because, he said, he needed to test his eyesight prior to driving back to London. In Downing Street there were drinks parties, leaks of information and backbiting that taken together meant the beginning of the end of Cummings’ relationship with Johnson and Johnson’s relationship with voters. In his 2021 BBC interview Cummings admitted plotting against Johnson: “He doesn’t have a plan, he doesn’t know how to be prime minister and we only got him in there because we had to solve a certain problem not because he was the right person to be running the country.”
The words “we only got him in there” are revealing of Dom as Puppetmaster – as this master of self-mythologising sees it – and Johnson as puppet. It is an admission of his key role in breaking Britain through finding in Boris Johnson a Useful Dupe who would do Dom’s bidding.
The Cummings’ legacy therefore is a botched Brexit without having a clue what Brexit might mean; securing Boris Johnson in Downing Street for the same reason and with the same result; and securing the eclipse of the much-diminished Conservative party of the 2020s.
Yes, the slogans were superb: “Take Back Control” and “We send the EU £350 million a week, let’s fund our NHS instead”, but the results were disastrous: the Conservative party’s loss of control and the lie on the Brexit bus. Dominic Cummings’ singular achievement is to do more to break Britain in the 21st century than anyone else in decades.
His Brexit triumph broke Britain’s relationship with the EU, diminished the UK’s significance in Washington, undermined the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, upended the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, in which Scots were promised that staying in the European Union meant remaining in the United Kingdom, split the Conservative party, and paved the way for the rise of Nigel Farage and Reform.
By 2024 Cummings was reported to be “testing the water” for a new political party to “replace the Tories.” In 2025 The New Statesman called him “Britain’s rogue intellectual” who they said now predicts “a civil war.” Disruption, division and disappointment are not side effects of Dominic Cummings’ peculiar skills. They combine to be his one significant talent.
Gavin Esler is author most recently of Britain Is Better Than This
Your next read
