(This blog could be overtaken by events.)
Let us try to think ourselves out of this. What Dominic Cummings did would have seen him sacked from any other position in any public office, and probably any private one.
Having told you and I we must not see our loved ones under any circumstances, and I know the pain caused by some of our friends, for example, being unable to see their grandchildren for the appreciable future, he drove half the length of the country to reunite his family.
Fact. His supporters, the jackals in the right wing, press pile in – they would, they need him for the usual drip feed of “briefings” by “sources close to Number 10”. A system, the press lobby, that has been utterly corrupted by this government. As they have corrupted so much else.
Why, if he has become such an embarrassment, does Johnson not just sack Cummings? Johnson has betrayed everyone else in his life, lovers, colleagues, friends.
Because they are tied together by co-dependency. Cummings needs to fuel his fantasies of being a Nietzschean superman by being close to power. He has achieved little.
Johnson is irredeemably lazy. His entire career has displayed a need to gain the top job, at whatever the cost, and do nothing with it. Just to be top dog, president of the Oxford Union, London Mayor, MP for Henley-upon-Thames, is enough. And PM, in the worst crisis in 75 years. He has no idea what to do. So do nothing, run away again. Search the fridges.
Johnson needs Cummings to put in the hours because he is too lazy, too idle, to master the briefs. He feels he is too privileged to do so. Only little people work hard. Cummings fulfils that essential role, so he can never be got rid of.
When Stalin died, the first thing they did was to shoot Beria, Stalin’s enforcer. When Johnson goes, which I suspect will not be long, his Beria will not be far behind.
Tom Paines Bones 