Dominic Cummings

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    What Elon Musk wore to the White House foreshadowed his downfall

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    In case you missed it, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have fallen out.For some – and in particular anyone looking at the tech billionaire’s White House wardrobe – this will come as little surprise. Long before anyone hit send on those inflammatory tweets, or tensions spilled out over Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB), Musk’s political downfall was written in the stitching.During his time in the White House, Musk shunned the sartorial rulebook of someone at the shoulder of a president, where suits and ties are the common code. He wore dark Maga baseball caps at the Oval Office and told a rally in New York: “I’m not just Maga, I’m dark gothic Maga.” Then there were the T-shirts with slogans such as “Occupy Mars”, “Tech Support” and “Dogefather”. At campaign rallies, commentators noted he looked “more like he belonged at a Magic: The Gathering tournament than a political event”, his dress sense the style equivalent of the k-holes that it is claimed Musk frequently disappeared into.The more casual styles of Musk and his Silicon Valley tech bros – where stiff collars are eschewed in favour or crewnecks, tailored jackets softly pushed out the door by padded gilets – are light years away from those of the suited-and-booted US Capitol.But if Musk’s clobber signalled a new DC power shift, it also spoke to different norms. “Disruption might be a badge of honour in the tech space,” says DC-based image coach and style strategist Lauren A Rothman, “but in politics, chaos has a much shorter runway. The White House has been around for a long time. We’re not going to stop wearing suits … This is the uniform.”View image in fullscreenAll of this dressing down, dressing objectively badly and dressing “inappropriately” has form. Consider, if you can bear to, the case of Dominic Cummings. The former Boris Johnson aide subjected Westminster to dishevelment, Joules gilets, beanies, Billabong T-shirts and tote bags advertising the 1983 gothic-inspired horror novel The Woman in Black. He wasn’t just a Tory, he was a gothic horror Tory.As Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian columnist and host of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast, notes: “Dressing down is usually a power move in politics, just as it is in the boardroom: only the most powerful can get away with it.” That was, he says, the message Cummings sent “when he roamed Number 10 in a gilet: ‘You lot are worker bees who have to wear a uniform, whereas I’m so indispensable to the man at the top, I can wear what I like’.”It was the same with Musk, whose threads were a flipped bird to all those Oval Office stiffs in suits. As Rothman puts it: “His uniform of casual defiance stands in sharp contrast to that traditionally suited corridor of political power.” And that contrast screams out his different, special status.Before him, there was “Sloppy Steve” Bannon, a man never knowingly under-shirted. On this side of the Atlantic, Freedland points to former David Cameron adviser Steve Hilton and his penchant for turning up to meetings barefoot: “ditching the shoes was an instant way of signalling his membership of the inner circle”.It’s that age-old question: who has the privilege to be scruffy? As Freedland puts it: “Musk was happy to stand next to the Resolute desk of the president looking like he was dressed for a gamers’ convention. That was his way of reminding everyone of his superior wealth and unique status, outside conventional politics.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenBut what Cummings and Musk share in sartorial disorder, they also share in political trajectories. Scruffy Icaruses who flew too close to the sun; their clothes a foreshadowing of their fall. Trump might talk about draining the swamp, but his Brioni suits are very much swamp-coded – plus, while Johnson might have had strategically unruly hair and ill-fitting suits as crumpled as a chip wrapper, suits they still were.Ultimately, nobody likes a bragger. Because dressing in a way in which your privilege is omnipresent if not outright stated, is a surefire way to piss people off. Not least Trump, who noted that Musk had “some very brilliant young people working for him that dress much worse than him, actually”, in an interview on Fox in February.“The contrast between Musk’s garb and Trump’s cabinet,” according to Freedland, “made them look and seem inferior: servants of the president rather than his equal. It was one more reason why more than a few in Trumpworld are glad to see the (poorly tailored) back of Elon Musk.”To read the complete version of this newsletter – complete with this week’s trending topics in The Measure and your wardrobe dilemmas solved – subscribe to receive Fashion Statement in your inbox every Thursday. More

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      Farage reportedly met Cummings for ‘friendly chat about the general scene’

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      Nigel Farage has reportedly met Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s adviser turned nemesis, after the Vote Leave founder suggested voters should back Reform UK at the local elections.Cummings, who was once a sworn enemy of Farage during the EU referendum as he battled to keep control of the leave campaign, is reported to have met the Reform leader to discuss Whitehall changes, which allies said was the strongest sign yet that Farage was taking seriously the idea of becoming prime minister.Cummings and Farage were at odds for years in the run-up to the referendum and during Cummings’s time at No 10, with Farage calling him a “horrible, nasty little man”. Cummings’s Vote Leave won the official campaign designation during the referendum.According to the Sunday Times, the pair met recently for a “friendly chat about the general scene” including subjects such as US politics, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, as well as “how No 10 and the Cabinet Office really work, about the catastrophe of the Tory party and about what Reform has to do to replace the Tories”. A Reform spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.Cummings was said to be in advanced talks to launch his own new party – the Start-Up party – but in February he posted on X that he believed voters should now back Reform UK.Asked by one X user on Sunday who he would vote for at the next general election, Cummings wrote: “Dunno yet but obviously everyone should vote Reform this spring … No downsides, just upsides.”In a post on his Substack, Cummings claimed Britain needed a significant political realignment including a merger of the Conservatives with Reform. He wrote: “Shove out Kemi [Badenoch] ASAP, take over Tories, get Trump/Elon to facilitate a merger with Reform, tip in a third force of elite talent and mass energy so voters see an essentially new political force whose essence is a decisive break with 1992-2024 … break the coalition supporting [Keir] Starmer, take over No 10, do regime change.”Farage’s party is on course for a number of gains at the local elections in May, including potentially winning control of eight local councils, according to Electoral Calculus.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNevertheless, Reform has been in turmoil for the past fortnight due to a significant rift between Farage and Rupert Lowe, one of his former MPs who has been thrown out of the party in a battle over bullying allegations and referred to the police. Lowe had criticised Farage in a Daily Mail interview and since claimed he had been censored by the party on immigration issues. More

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      The Guardian view on Dominic Cummings: voting to leave | Editorial

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      Boris Johnson should have asked his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, to resign months ago when he broke the first coronavirus lockdown and showed no regret afterwards. Perhaps Mr Johnson thought he could not do without the architect of his election victory and his ally in pursuing a hardline Brexit. But the damage was done. Public confidence in the government’s handling of coronavirus fell and has not stopping falling since.Mr Cummings walked out of Downing Street, in an act of theatrical defiance, on Friday. It is a mark of the tragicomic nature of Mr Johnson’s government that a week of infighting within No 10 dominates the news at a time of national emergency when hundreds are dying every day from a dangerous disease. Mr Cummings gets to walk away while Britain is stuck with the damage he has wrought.He won the Brexit referendum by spreading lies, unconcerned about damaging public trust. He has snubbed parliament, weaponised populist sentiment against state institutions and played fast and loose with the constitution. He may say that unconventional times needed unconventional ideas. But he seemed to enjoy his war too much. He picked, and lost, too many fights for his own good. A swirling cast of characters was drawn in. Even Carrie Symonds, Mr Johnson’s fiancee, got involved.Mr Cummings was edged out of power before he could flounce out. This tawdry episode demonstrates two things. One is Mr Johnson’s palpable lack of leadership in a crisis. He encouraged his chief adviser to embrace his inner Leninism — where the end justifies the means. Second is the government’s well-deserved reputation for incompetence. The prime minister over-centralised Downing Street and let Mr Cummings ride roughshod over a weak cabinet that he had hand-picked but which lacked the confidence or foresight to predict problems.Mr Cummings’ plans have gone awry thanks to the unpredictability of politics. After the US election his ideas for a hard Brexit were going nowhere. A Biden White House would have little time for the UK if it turned its back on Europe. Mr Cummings’ departure is a clear indication that the prime minister is ready to make the compromises needed to strike a deal with the EU.Coronavirus required bigger government. Fiscal conservatives like the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and many other Tory MPs worried that once voters understood that big spending would not bankrupt the economy they might get a taste for decent public services. Mr Sunak wanted to balance the books, Mr Cummings wanted to blow them up. He agitated for the un-Tory idea that state power could turbocharge the economy, making powerful enemies in No 11.Resentments have built like sediment on the river bed of Conservatism and threatened to choke the flow of government. Backbench MPs see Mr Cummings’ contempt for them as symptomatic of a high-handed Downing Street and have rebelled in such numbers that it threatens the stability of a government that, paradoxically, won a landslide largely thanks to Mr Cummings.Mr Johnson might think that, without his adviser, his ungovernable party becomes governable. But he might find that elections become unwinnable. Some of this is more about style than substance. Mr Johnson still has to make good on his promise to “level up” Britain, especially since north-south divisions have been dramatically exposed by coronavirus. The prime minister needs to up his game. Once gained, a reputation for incompetence is hard to shift. Too often with Mr Johnson the buck stops somewhere else and blame is dumped on someone else. With Mr Cummings out, there is no hiding place for Mr Johnson. More

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      Move on from lies and arrogance? No, let’s reflect | Letters

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      Move on from lies and arrogance? No, let’s reflect Garth Groombridge says this government is all about elitism, selfishness and power, Dr Jim Ford thinks Boris Johnson should stand aside again while he fully recovers, Natalie Cohen says the press should be free to ask uncomfortable questions, while Francis Blake wonders what Mary Wakefield was […] More