Thread: there’s something oddly tragic – if unsympathetic – about Dom Cummings as a figure. He’s someone who wanted to make radical, lasting changes to the operation of British government, and thought he was the person to push those through.

And he ended up in the best possible position to do so: the top advisor to a PM famously willing to delegate huge power. And then he helped that PM to an insurmountable 80-seat majority. On top of that, Brexit provided the vehicle for real structural change of gov machinery.

In an odd way, Coronavirus could even have helped Cummings’ project: crises lead to changes – the NHS was born out of WW2. If Cummings could’ve shown shortcomings of the state and how to do better in Corona response, there was potential there.

Of course none of that happened. Cummings can spin all he likes, but if he’s gone next month, nothing of what he wanted to accomplish – beyond Brexit itself – will have been done, and none of his smaller changes will stick. All of that conflict and chaos for…nothing.

Hence a tragic figure: he was given (or helped engineer) a once-in-generation chance to do what he wanted, and squandered it largely due to his own character. The comfort for him, I guess, is he’ll never see it that way.