Kmflett's Blog

Norman Stone, Michael Gove, Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson: the Tory fascination with Lenin

During a speech to the CBI on Monday Boris Johnson quoted Lenin to the effect that Soviet Power equals Communism plus electrification. Johnson does not want to introduce Communism but rather suggested that an (undefined,  forthcoming) industrial revolution would involve Green Power plus electrification.

Lenin did indeed say the words in a report on the work of the Council of People’s Commissars on December 22nd 1920.

While its possible that Johnson got the quote from a Glyndebourne opera in fact the modern Tory Party has a strange fascination with Lenin.

The late Professor Norman Stone (Age) who specialised in modern history and in particular Eastern Europe, wrote a good deal about Lenin, far from all of it critical. An inveterate smoker Stone did however complain that the Sealed Train was the first ever non-smoking one.

Stone taught Dominic Cummings at Oxford and Cummings is known to be a fan of Lenin. Not of course of his politics but of his leadership and organisational skills. Cummings was an advisor to Michael Gove, who has or had a bust of Lenin in his office and then to Boris Johnson. He quit that role in late 2020 but one might think that Johnson paid enough attention to him to pick up the occasional piece of Leninism.