Looking for a summer cleanse? I have unsubscribed from Dominic Cummings‘ newsletter. In fact, it was the first thing I did before a break from Westminster – but more on that later.
It certainly felt too late. Like anyone who leaves a job in Downing StreetDom’s £100-a-year musings bring diminishing returns – and his readership is now more Goings than Cummings.
Dom, of course, has a different view of himself. In a recent newsletter, he humbly gave the country his list of favorite movies.
A list, I stress, that absolutely no one asked for. That didn’t stop Dom from putting asterisks next to seven of them, which he said was his “guess of what people will find most interesting on this list 100 years from now.” Hundred year? Classic Cathedral.
Looking for a summer cleanse? I have unsubscribed from Dominic Cummings’ newsletter. In fact it was the first thing I did before a break from Westminster – but more on that later
Fittingly for a misguided fading star, it included Sunset Boulevard. Also Citizen Kane, about a media mogul whose last word was ‘Rosebud’.
Unfortunately, the tosh that Dom spat in the rose garden after his ill-fated trip to Barnard Castle was far from his last in public.
That day in May 2020 we were hacked into Downing Street’s walled garden – but only after handing in our phones. It was the height of the daily televised Covid scare tactics, when even sitting on park benches was off limits.
Dom made us wait for the best part of an hour, until, like Norma Desmond, he was ready for his close-up. He clearly learned nothing from Glengarry Glen Ross, another classic on his list. In it, Al Pacino’s self-service salesman says, “Always tell the truth, it’s easiest to remember.” Not for Dom, who repeatedly told me on air that his Barnard Castle outing with his kids in the car, on his wife’s birthday, was to test his eyesight after he recovered from Covid.
But out in the cold a few months later, he suddenly had Total Recall of all the sex scandals, graft, and favoritism that eluded him while helping to run the country.
Unfortunately, most of his focus was a vendetta against Carrie Johnson, which may explain the inclusion of Gone With The Wind on his list. Scarlett O’Hara’s ability to turn velvet drapes into an equally soft gown gives Carrie Antoinette’s love of pretty drapes a chance to earn her money.
To date, Cummings has failed to understand, when it comes to most of his Carrie psychodrama, that we honestly don’t give a damn.
Then there’s Wall Street, the movie that gave us “Greed is good, greed is right.” Greed Works’ – a mantra that guided those in the chumocracy who made money from Covid contracts.
Finally, his favorite political film is All The President’s Men, about two reporters who expose a corrupt head of state.
Dom, of course, had recumbent favorites in the media, offering itself as another kind of ‘deep throat’ to those in power. Speaking of which, Cummings’ biopic, Brexit: The Uncivil War, (advisor: Tim Shipman) didn’t make the cut of our hero’s favorite movies.
As for me, to quote our outgoing Prime Minister, it’s Hasta La Vista, Baby. I’m going on leave next week to focus on other things, so this column will have a short break until I get back.
Keep sending tips to [email protected] who I will still pick up. I will come back.
Boris’s new nanny tries to keep it clean
What a wonderfully insane stream of consciousness Cleo Watson has written in the cool Tatler bible. She was Johnson’s deputy chief of staff – a £75,000 role that, she reveals, involved being the naughty prime minister’s posh nanny. Jacob Rees-Mogg could have just lent one of his to Boris, couldn’t he?
It’s unclear whether the current deputy chief of staff, David Canzini, has continued Watson’s duties – from taking the Prime Minister’s temperature to reminding him to wash his hands (to borrow from Lady Macbeth, they’ll never come clean). to be?).
Whatever it is, we probably won’t find out.
Canzini’s arrival coincided with a trend among specialty advisors to set their WhatsApps to “disappearing messages” on their work phones. Everything they send will be deleted automatically soon. Good luck with future investigations trying to get documentary evidence.