Dominic Cummings: A graduate of the Stone Age
Dominic Cummings is in the news again. This happens from time to time and its never for good reasons. On this occasion it is reported that he broke lockdown rules to travel to his parents in Durham despite the fact that he lives in London.
Cummings last media appearance was as a result of him attending meetings of SAGE the committee of scientists who advise on the COVID-19 crisis. Cummings is an historian. The Tories claim he was just listening. If so he could surely just have read minutes or a meeting summary.
Cummings was taught modern history at Oxford by Prof. Norman Stone who died in 2019. Stone’s most well known work was on the Eastern Front in the First World War and it’s not likely he had much to impart about epidemics.
What he will certainly have impressed on Cummings is the public role a right-wing historian can play. Stone was a larger than life character, a controversialist, fond of a drink or two and sometimes rather more than that. He was also on occasion known for being abrasive and rude.
Otto English (Byline Times January 2020) has noted of the period when Stone was at Oxford:
Stone was an arch manipulator who specialised in malice, abuse and dismissiveness of those with whom he disagreed. He was a man lost in his own self-absorbed myth, who had an over-arching belief in his intellectual prowess over those of others.
Richard J Evans Guardian obituary of Stone is here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/25/norman-stone-obituary
Stone advised Mrs Thatcher on German Re-unification in 1990 a subject on which he certainly had an opinion (he was for it) but about which he was no expert.
He used his academic status to write a right-wing column on the state of the world for the Sunday Times and another historian he taught at Oxford, Niall Ferguson, has followed in his footsteps, rather more surely than Stone himself it should be said.
Boris Johnson has been advised in the Tory media to take guidance from historians and Cummings could, at least in the manner of Stone, offer a view.
Whether Cummings can be drawn away from dabbling in dodgy science to opine on something he has some background in and whether Johnson wants to hear it is another matter but he would certainly be better doing that than trying and failing to be chief advisor to the Government.
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