The Johnson-Cummings affair was always likely to end badly. Johnson is a "Bullingdon radical": you smash the pub for fun, then write a cheque to fix the damage. Cummings is a revolutionary who wants to burn the pub down. Their alliance has done lasting harm to UK politics. THREAD

2. Johnson is a rowdy, not a revolutionary. He's the schoolboy who rags the teachers but wants to be Head Boy; who drops stink-bombs in class but loves the old school. Soaked in privilege, he upsets the bathtub for the sheer joy of flooding the dorm below - & Matron will mop up.

3. Johnson's radicalism is about disrupting the system, not replacing it. He'll throw bottles at Parliament, the Courts & the EU, & thrill to the sound of glass smashing. But when the debris has been swept up he still wants frictionless trade, privacy laws & banks of cheering MPs

4. Cummings is not a Bullingdon man. He's a Jacobin: perhaps the first real constitutional radical to run a British govt. His blog rages against MPs, judges, civil servants & the whole apparatus of the state. He foresees a time when "we will be able to remake human nature itself"

5. Johnson might fling bread rolls at "the Establishment", but he does so from the comfort of the members' dining room. Cummings looks like he'd cheerfully dynamite the whole building.

6. Whatever their personal relations, this was always a marriage of convenience. Johnson got a ruthless campaigner who could win an election and take the decisions he shirked. Cummings got the helm of Number 10 & a chance to turn the guns of the ship of state onto its own decks.

7. The alliance between the Bullingdon Club & the Jacobin Club always had an expiry date. The only question was how much damage Cummings could do before Johnson got cold feet. And as we weigh up the scale of the destruction, we should never forget where responsibility really lies

8. It was Johnson who let Guy Fawkes into the building. It was Johnson who supplied him with matches and gunpowder, and gave him the run of the parliamentary estate. Cummings at least believed in what he was doing. Johnson seems to have done it for a lark. https://twitter.com/redhistorian/status/1327168917874282496?s=20

9. Like a vengeful poltergeist, Cummings may return. In the meantime, Parliament, the rule of law, the conduct of elections & Britain's reputation overseas have all taken serious harm. The economic fuses are yet to detonate. And the responsibility for all of it is on Johnson. END