![A poster is pictured outside the Theatre Royal Windsor advertising 'Dom The Play' on 8 April 2023 in Windsor, United Kingdom. 'Dom The Play' tells the story of the political career of Dominic Cummings, former chief adviser to Boris Johnson. (photo by Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images)](https://wp.inews.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/SEI_178117551-e1698663380973.jpg?resize=640,360&strip=all&quality=90)
I know that the Covid inquiry, even in the context of what’s going on in the world at the moment, is still a seminal event, but I can’t help myself ruminating on one of its most inconsequential matters: what will Dominic Cummings be wearing for his appearance before Baroness Hallett tomorrow?
I am sure that Cummings himself doesn’t think that this is a trivial concern. He will have spent a long time pondering his wardrobe, knowing that this inquiry, which has been running public hearings since June and which has already cost the public purse around £100m, is about to get an injection of showbusiness.
Cummings will have been deliberating these important questions in his isolated redoubt on Holy Island: T-shirt or carefully tousled formal shirt (white, for preference)? Cashmere top (very expensive, for sure, but designed to look scruffy)? Baggy trousers, certainly. And what about a beanie? Might exude the right unstudied, working man air for the inevitable photographs of his arriving and departing the inquiry HQ in Paddington.
Whatever else, the former principal strategist to the prime minister will reveal himself as the apogee of the carefully curated, counter-revolutionary, Boho-chic-meets-grunge style that he believes marks him out in public estimation as a true iconoclast. Cummings, we can safely assume, believes in Oscar Wilde’s observation: “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.”
If this portrays Cummings as a rather vainglorious soul, I make no apologies. He has been eagerly anticipating his return to the public consciousness, and has apologised to the £10-a-month followers of his Substack blog that they’ve had to wait for his opinions on matters of the moment because the preparation for today’s appearance at the inquiry has, he says, been “painful”.
All this is not to say that Cummings’s evidence to the inquiry should be dismissed lightly. Far from it. He was there at the centre of the government’s formative pandemic strategy, and while he comes across as a man motivated by personal animus (Boris Johnson is a “complete f***wit”, he said in an interview), political ambition (he wants the status quo overthrown, and a new party in his image to rise up), and overwhelming confidence in his right-ness, his evidence is not constrained by party political allegiances or a desire to keep his job.
Cummings presents himself as an independent thinker who was frustrated by the stasis of Westminster politics, which couldn’t embrace his radical views. Those who follow his blog will know that will be the thrust of his submission to the inquiry tomorrow. “Almost everyone in Westminster is much happier with the existing system failing dismally than facing what it means to change seriously,” he wrote back in June last year. “It’s even true after such a disaster as Covid.”
He may well be right that “frictionless” government is the way forward, enabling quick reactions and alacrity in decision-making, but this, it seems to me, is a blueprint for unelected officials and advisers (like Cummings, let’s say) to have even more influence in public policy, and I’m not sure we want that.
I fear that much of the interest in Cummings’s appearance at the inquiry will be in the personality politics of the pandemic response, who said what to whom, and the revelations of government by WhatsApp message (there has already been a spoiler relating to inappropriate and misogynistic language used by people whom we pay to know better).
The mere sight of Cummings giving evidence is a depressing reminder of a miserable, singularly divisive and deeply distressing time in public life that is thankfully consigned to the past. And then there are, of course, the painful lessons of Covid to consider.