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Dominic Cummings. Bismarckian & Reform UK fan

In Uncategorized on February 27, 2025 by kmflett

You may have missed it because it seems to have been reported only in the Daily Express which is the print version of GB News but Dominic Cummings is backing Reform UK. The coming falling out between Cummings and Farage will be great theatre

It may come as a surprise to those who know Dominic Cummings from his Vote Leave and No.10 period but he took a first in history at Oxford, studying under the late Prof. Norman Stone.

Stone was a right-wing historian and fan of Mrs Thatcher and idiosyncratic in his views. Of historical actors in the modern era he favoured Churchill and Bismarck as significant historical figures.

Cummings picked up his interest for Bismarck from Stone and has blogged about the German Chancellor (1815-1898). Bismarck, the ‘Iron Chancellor’ who was instrumental in creating a unified German State. His Wiki entry notes that he ‘distrusted democracy and ruled through a strong well-trained bureaucracy’.

Cummings returned to the Bismarck question in answers to questions to subscribers to his social media site. Not just Stone but Eric Hobsbawm supported the historical significance of Bismarck. Cummings may warrant a footnote in the history of post-Brexit Britain.

Studying Bismarck was the best help to understand what politics really is and how it’s possible to radically outperform – but also that you should never ever expect anybody to say ‘oh I was wrong you were right’. In politics you never really know if what you’ve done is a mistake! And even very smart people struggle to escape fashion and gang mentality

And in another answer he said:

If you want to study effective action in politics there is no better case study than Bismarck.

He was playing a completely different game to everybody else and you can trace a lot of how he did it and how he thought in the record.

Guardian report 21st June 2021

Bismarck was not an enthusiast for democratic politics and judging by the views of Dominic Cummings neither is he.

I don’t expect too many would disagree but political change happens via a democratic vote not because those who think they know better than others say it should. That doesn’t make Cummings a fascist but he is clearly a supporter of a significantly more authoritarian society than Britain currently is. There will be those who argue that this isn’t possible even given how dismissive of civil liberties the current Government currently are. It is. Look around Europe for examples.

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