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Controversial senior adviser to the prime minister, Dominic Cummings, is retiring. Johnson now wants to create a softer image.
Press Boris Johnson for a greener climate policy: Carrie Symonds, the British Prime Minister’s fiancée.
Photo: Chris Jackson (Reuters)
A few weeks before Britain leaves the internal market and the EU customs union, the “final Brexit”, Prime Minister Boris Johnson fires his chief strategist. On Friday, Dominic Cummings, the most influential figure at the seat of government in London, announced his immediate resignation. 24 hours earlier, Lee Cain, the government’s communications director, had launched the begging.
Cain and Cummings are key figures in the Bexiteer movement. Johnson was his political figure. Cummings sees his Brexit mission accomplished, but he wanted to save his power in the post-Brexit era to implement plans for far-reaching change in the form of a sharp turn to the right. This won’t happen now, experts in London predict: Johnson is obviously looking for a new and less conflictual course.
A less dogmatic line
The Prime Minister’s confidants assume that Johnson wants to end the “culture war” with which Cummings wanted to “stir up” the public services, the BBC and the judiciary and bring it under his control. London also wants to take better care of UK cohesion in the future. The resurgence of the independence movement in Scotland deeply worries many conservatives.
Above all, Boris Johnson, driven by his fiancee Carrie Symonds, wants to defend a green policy, a decisive action against climate change, reports the pro-government London Times. Symonds was apparently partly responsible for the departure of Cains and Cummings, the newspaper writes. In general, Johnson wants to follow a less dogmatic line, give his government a “softer image” and repair troubled relations with his MPs.
In search of the gray eminence: Dominic Cummings, senior adviser to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has to go.
Photo: Andy Rain (Keystone)
In the ranks of the ruling faction, there were mostly positive reactions at the end of the Cummings era. Many deputies had felt increasingly ignored by the seat of government. Cummings had never hidden his disdain for her. He never cared much about the Conservative Party, of which he was not even a member. He saw them more as a vehicle for a radical restructuring of the central institutions in the British state.
Most of the Conservatives had remained silent as Cummings used slogans and precise strategies for success to secede from the EU and secure a triumphant electoral victory for his party last December. Since then, especially since the beginning of the Corona crisis, there has been growing concern about the confused course of the government with many U-turns. There was growing outrage at the “arrogance” of Johnson’s top adviser, without whom the head of government seemed unable to get along.
The Bank of England complains of the “worst economic recession in 300 years”.
Ultimately, Cummings has proven to be a “passive post” in government, says prominent Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale. His colleague Sir Bernhard Jenkins explains that Cumming’s departure finally gives Johnson a chance to “start over.”
This fresh start would also be helpful in the face of the president’s change in Washington, said Tobias Ellwood, Conservative chairman of the House defense committee. With Corona, Brexit and the desperate economic situation, London faces “an unprecedented series of challenges” that we have not seen to this point since the war.
Officially more than 50,000 deaths per crown
In fact, the UK disaster reports are endless. According to official estimates, the total number of deaths per crown surpassed the 50,000 mark this week. The Bank of England complains of the “worst economic recession in 300 years”.
It is not yet possible to estimate what consequences the imminent exit from the EU internal market and the customs union will have, and whether there will be the harshest form of Brexit, an exit without a treaty. Some London commentators suspect that with the departure of his most intransigent Brexit strategists, Johnson is likely to show more willingness to strike a deal with Brussels.
