Dominic Cummings: Beyond the History Man. A career in campaigning
Dominic Cummings appearance before a Commons Committee on 26th May has sparked some interest in his back pages.
While its not difficult to find out his career trajectory, understanding it is more complex.
I’ve relied mainly on a piece written by the FT’s George Parker on January 16th 2020, before the current crisis. At this point Cummings was known as a key figure in the Vote Leave campaign (from 2015). He appeared as senior advisor to Johnson when he became PM in July 2019.
Parker sees Cummings as dishevelled in appearance and idiosyncratic in terms of ideas, not so different to Johnson.
Cummings (b. 1971) went to Durham School (founded 1414) and then to Oxford. Here he was taught ancient history by Robin Lane Fox (the FT’s gardening columnist) and Norman ‘Stone’ Age who did modern history. He got a first class degree.
Stone had done pioneering historical research in Eastern Europe in the 1960s so perhaps its not surprising that he encouraged him to spend time in newly market capitalist Russia after graduating in 1994.
He appears to have mostly slept on the sofa of a Telegraph journalist and got work as a broker or analyst (though he didn’t speak Russian). A Mirror report from 2019 suggest Cummings spent much of his time drinking and having sex which would also have appealed to Johnson.
Cummings returned to the UK in the late 1990s and became director of Business for Sterling which campaigned against the Euro. Later in 2004 he was a leading figure in a successful campaign to frustrate a Labour Referendum to set up a North-East Regional Assembly.
From 2007 to 2014 Cummings was Special Advisor to Michael Gove including the period after 2010 when he was Education Secretary.
Cummings doesn’t appear to have been a Tory member (and had no real reason to be so unless he wanted to be an elected politician which doesn’t seem to fit his CV at all). He might reasonably be thought to be on the political right by background and education but aside from blogs hasn’t produced material on his philosophy, worldview etc.
Having researched and written this piece I’m pondering comparable figures….
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