Dominic Cummings news – live: Boris Johnson aide ‘leaves legacy of Brexit damage’ as Tories embrace ‘reset’

Here’s our chief political commentator John Rentoul ‘s thoughts on Dominc Cummings’ legacy:

“The instant obituaries of Dominic Cummings have one thing wrong about his legacy in British history, I think. He is undoubtedly a brilliant and unusual campaigner, and must take more credit than anyone other than Boris Johnson for winning the referendum to leave the EU.

“But he didn’t win last year’s general election for Johnson, whatever Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher’s official biographer, says. 

“In fact, everything Cummings advised went horribly wrong and nearly doomed the whole enterprise.”

Claims over Cummings’ ‘revolutionary’ credentials contested

As ever, a row rumbles on over whether Dominic Cummings is in fact a political mastermind, briefly intensified by The Sun’s executive editor hailing the man who first held a senior position under a Tory party leader nearly two decades ago as a “genuinely revolutionary outsider”.

However, Labour’s Jess Philipps was among those who appeared to take issue with such a phrasing:

And Piers Morgan was one of several challenging the framing of Mr Cummings as a maverick genius:

Labour suspends members for passing motion criticising Jeremy Corbyn suspension

In other news, the chair, co-secretary and a number of other members in Bristol West Labour are facing disciplinary action after branding Mr Corbyn’s suspension “a politically motivated attack against the left of the Labour Party by the leadership”, our policy correspondent Jon Stone reports.

Labour declined to comment formally on the crackdown, but a source said the motion was not “competent constituency Labour party business” because it related to individual disciplinary matters.

Sir Keir Starmer’s new general secretary David Evans wrote to local parties last week warning them not to “have discussions about, or pass motions in relation to any aspect of individual disciplinary cases” – a veiled reference to the former leader’s fate.

Our chief political commentator highlights this quote from Boris Johnson biographer Andrew Grimson, who tells the Huffington Post: 

“Boris has a much higher tolerance of risk than most people, including most politicians. He sometimes likes to let things run with a kind of belief that they will somehow work themselves out.

“Most of us in order to get a grip on some alarming situation would think ‘Christ we’ve got to have a plan, we’ve got to get everyone knowing what they got to do in an organisation, you must have a chief of staff’.

“Johnson I think actually likes a much more fluid situation where he has lots of gifted people around him and a lot of confusion, while he’s still the centre of attention. This would horrify a certain kind of solemn person but he realises the value of putting on a sort of spectacle, of dramatising things and this drama has played itself out.”

Our policy correspondent Jon Stone has this round-up of the Tory reaction to Dominic Cummings departure, replete with hopeful visions for a future Downing Street, comparisons with long-gone empires and Barnard Castle repentance.

A Momentum-backed slate of candidates won seven posts on the Labour national executive committee on Friday, making them the largest faction in the contest, Jon Stone reports.

But the victory is unlikely to be enough to cause serious trouble for Keir Starmer, who retains a working majority on the NEC – partly because it is only partially elected by members.

A new proportional voting system also ensured more representation for the party’s right wing or moderates, whose Labour To Win slate of candidates picked up three seats. They have pledged to support the leadership.

New information obtained under freedom of information (FOI) laws now indicates that local authorities were not consulted about the government’s decision to lift the asylum evictions ban prior to it being announced on 15 September, our social affairs correspondent May Bulman reports. 

All 26 English councils who responded to the request said this was the case.

Councils said it was “wholly unacceptable” for the Home Office to keep them “in the dark” on the decision, warning that evictions would push people into destitution and homelessness in their areas, as well as creating a greater risk of Covid-19 transmission.

Tory MPs beg for ‘grown up’ as new chief of staff

With many Conservatives clearly hoping for a new era of less divisive and controlling leadership from Downing Street, PoliticsHome spoke to several about the vacancy for a permanent chief of staff – the role that has supposedly led to the curtain falling on No10’s “Vote Leave boyband”.

“Just get some f***ing grown-ups in please, we’ve got two weeks until we need to make a decision about how we come out of lockdown, and we don’t need all this in-fighting,” one longstanding MP reportedly said.

A former Tory party adviser also said they should “just hire someone in their 50s, who is a grown up, that MPs can get on board with and move on”.

Another was reported as saying they “don’t care who is chief of staff, it’s not the West Wing”, but merely want someone less hostile who can liaise better with MPs.

Some of the more damning allegations of the supposed row within Downing Street yesterday have come from the FT’s Sebastian Payne. 

Here he quotes a No10 insider as warning of a Cummings backlash with the undecidedly menacing phrase, “there is a blog coming”.

But one ministerial adviser appears to be significantly underwhelmed by the power of blogging.

The former Labour spin doctor appears to have a similar outlook to the EU’s Guy Verhofstadt in warning of the “damage” Dominic Cummings leaves behind.

“This is the tragedy of all this. This crowd secured the biggest change to our country in generations,” Alastair Campbell writes for Independent Voices. 

“Yet they cannot even manage themselves, let alone the vast complexity of the change for which they are responsible. Britain, not they, will pay the price.”

Read his full column here: