He’s been accused of breaking the rules and undermining Britain’s COVID-19 lockdown by driving to Durham with his wife and child over Easter. Media commentators have made clear their outrage over Cummings in no uncertain terms. More than one million people have signed a petition calling for him to be sacked. But Dom is still there. He hasn’t apologised and clearly doesn’t see that he has to.
Some will find his attitude shocking. But it’s worth reflecting that if he wasn’t like this, then it’s unlikely the Tories would have a House of Commons majority of 80.
Cummings is the Russophile student of Russian history and literature who, as the politically astute Tweeter ‘Socialist Tipster’ has pointed out, has used Bolshevik tactics to consolidate the power hold of the Conservative Party- and in particular the pro-Brexit faction of the party. A BBC profile of Cummings quoted a friend of his who said ‘Dom is a much more successful Leninist than any of the Leninists around Corbyn".
By contrast, Jeremy Corbyn, who we were told repeatedly was ‘a dangerous communist’, lost out because when push came to shove, he proved to be more of a ‘wishy-washy liberal’, than the heir of Lenin and Felix Dzerzhinsky.
Remember when Corbyn became Labour leader? There were warnings from his enemies in the party and in the mainstream media that together with his team of ’Stalinists’, he was going to purge his opponents. But no purges were forthcoming. In fact Corbyn did the opposite. He made no moves against those were out to destroy him and his project, but did throw key ideological allies under the bus- to try and placate his enemies. Just about the only people who went to the Gulag under Corbyn were his supporters. It was a disastrous strategy.
Corbyn’s opponents soon realised that they were dealing not with Iron Felix, but Felix the Cat.
Cummings- who spent three years living in Russia in the 1990s- made no such mistakes. Like 'Iron Felix' Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, no one could ever accuse him of being too nice to his enemies. Dom knew that politics was a contact sport- that it was a case of kill or be killed. He remembered the adage that those who make revolution half way only dig their own graves. He also kept in mind Lenin’s famous quote ‘You cannot make a revolution in white gloves’.
September 2019 saw no fewer than 21 Tory MPs, many of them party stalwarts, lose the whip for defying Boris Johnson on Brexit. Media pundits told us that this was appalling and that Cummings and Johnson were destroying the Conservative Party. In fact, it was only making the Tories’ national appeal stronger, as opinion polls showed. There was similar consternation when Boris Johnson announced plans to prorogue Parliament. More than 1.7m signed a petition against it, but Johnson went ahead.
Again, it boosted his ratings. Centrist commentator Ian Dunt wrote of the battle against Tory Leninism’- and bemoaned the fact that ‘the party of traditional values has left the field of battle’.
Did Cummings perhaps remember how Lenin had shut down the Constituent Assembly in January 1918? By taking a hammer and sickle to Parliament Cummings was helping to establish Johnson’s ’man of the people’ credentials. Just think for a minute what a task he faced back in July 2019. The politician he was advising was an Old Etonian Bullingdon Boy. All through his life Boris Johnson had enjoyed great privilege. He sounded incredibly posh. Yet however improbable the prospect seemed, Cummings was able to position the banker-friendly upper-class Johnson as the man who would stand up for the working-classes against the Establishment, by ‘getting Brexit done‘. The oft-repeated slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’ was Cumming’s 2019 equivalent of Lenin’s Peace! Land! Bread! in 1917. Both captured the public mood of the time and consequently proved stunningly successful.
On election night Labour’s 'Red Wall' fell. Cummings’ detractors had to eat their words. ‘Workington Man’ delivered in spades for the Tories. This particular ‘revolution’ was televised, and it was a depressing watch for Labour.
Today, Cummings provokes plenty of hate, but I suspect some on the left secretly wish that he had been on their side. Had Corbyn studied what the Bolsheviks did to gain power- and then to maintain it- he might now be UK Prime Minister. But, because of Cummings, it was the right-wing Tories, and not left-wing Labourites who gained most from the harsh historical lessons of 1917/18.
Follow Neil Clark @NeilClark66 and @MightyMagyar
Support Neil Clark’s Libel and Legal Enforcement Fund