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00:02on the 24th of July 2019 Boris Johnson entered Downing Street but waiting inside was a lesser
00:10known figure who'd long harbored a radical vision for the future of the country when it comes to
00:18understanding how the state is failing he is absolutely the best guy in the business Dominic
00:24Cummings had led the campaign to take Britain out of the European Union it was about taking back
00:30control of the system itself and it was to him the Prime Minister turned to help shape a vision
00:36for a post-Brexit future are you now in charge are you running number 11 as well as number 10
00:43how do
00:44you describe them in a word determined challenging unreasonable interesting unpleasant funny dangerous
00:53a renaissance man a myth maker genius he's dull so he was a professional political shaker-upper
01:01but Cummings controversial career hadn't sprung from nowhere it's the story of over two decades
01:07of British politics that phone was probably conservative central office telling you get
01:13down there quick face some kind of disciplinary reaction I think they gave up on that a while
01:17ago I think he's always had a plan he's always known where he's wanted to go what happened in
01:22this general election shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to his career
01:26but what can Cummings extraordinary rise tell us about how politics is changing on a national stage
01:33he could just completely blow himself up but if he doesn't he's going to be a very significant
01:38figure for the course of the next 10 years
01:55neither Dominic Cummings nor vote leave sprung into existence spontaneously in 2016 I think the
02:02beginning of the story really has to start with with new labor the end of the 1990s there was a
02:13view
02:13of Europe emerging that was not only bringing peace to the European continent but also power in the in the
02:20global economy once in each generation the case for Britain in Europe needs to be remade from first
02:31principles and the time for this generation is now in the late 90s the thought was that the mother and
02:40father of all battles was going to be over whether Britain was going to join the single currency so
02:45everybody was geared up for that being the battle your skeptic movement had been fabulously boring most
02:55people saw it as an eccentric harmlessness wake up wake up into this came this rather live wire figure of
03:06Dominic Cummings he's making his name by the late 90s as someone to watch I went into politics in the
03:13first
03:13place because I regard the euro as a fundamental threat to the British economy and to its democracy
03:20Cummings joined the euro skeptic fight as director of research and a pressure group opposing the euro
03:27Gordon Brown's chief economic advisor is now republishing a pamphlet he wrote a few years ago
03:31saying what a terrible idea the euro is I mean that's if that isn't a clear message to the media
03:35and
03:36to everybody else I don't know what is the idea that we're split on this issue is a nonsense but
03:39another issue I would say is the fact that there aren't people within your organization and within
03:44the conservative party who are arguing for Britain to completely pull out of Europe altogether for
03:48them to start talking about getting out of the EU and that's our position well it's complete deceit
03:52and I remember vividly a lunch when I was at the times with Tony Blair and he said to me
04:00you know
04:00all this anti-euro feeling all this opposition to the single currency it's really just to cover for
04:09people who wants to leave the European Union and I said no no no no no no it's not they're
04:12separate
04:13projects um how stupid can you get all of the constitutional arguments were about control and
04:21are we able to shape our own destiny the no campaign portrayed the euro as handcuffing Britain
04:29and emasculating its governing class Cummings and his colleagues were determined to give euro
04:37scepticism a radical new image Dominic came bounding into the room with a sort of tiggerish
04:43enthusiasm and he had produced a riff on a poster by the Sex Pistols he was offering a very different
04:50very un-tory approach to euro scepticism Cummings had realized that the euro sceptic message would hit
04:59home harder if they talked not about the pros and cons of monetary union but about the NHS in a
05:06foretaste of what would come later the campaign produced postcards comparing the annual NHS budget
05:13to the cost of joining the euro but the figures were strongly contested critics argued that the
05:19true NHS budget was closer to 47 billion and the cost of joining the euro was closer to 12 billion
05:27the
05:28numbers are there to trigger a discussion so is this comparable then or is it you know okay well
05:33that was a one-off fee against an annual fee they don't care that that if you like unravels in
05:39that
05:39way they are trying to trigger a debate this was a method of communication of propaganda which was
05:47completely careless of the truth but which served a political ideological purpose Dominic Cummings
05:57became a past master at it Cummings soon gained a reputation as a confrontational campaigner in his
06:05battle against the euro Cummings came head-to-head with Colin Perry of the Confederation of British
06:10Industry it was late at night and I asked him what his background was what his experience was he said
06:16he'd
06:16been doing some wheeling and dealing in Russia as far as I remember it got a little bit heated
06:21most businesses want to stay in the EU and they want to keep the pounds it's a total falsification to
06:26say that
06:27business is against the euro it certainly is not all the same room let me just finish a minute all
06:31the
06:32surveys taken have shown that there's a majority in favor of joining the euro the
06:35question is when when the time is right there's a hard part you have somebody just denying the black is
06:40white I mean you're a man who's never worked in business in your life and you're just a young
06:45politician on the make time gentlemen please don't you both should go and have a drink now what happened
06:50when you came off air we had to come down a rather narrow flight of steps from the studio and
06:57I led the
06:57way down and suddenly felt that he grabbed my shoulders from behind and was trying to push me down the
07:02steps
07:03you think he was trying to push you down the stairs oh definitely yes yeah I managed to keep my
07:09footing
07:09and make my way to the bottom of the steps uh and then he I I turned around to in
07:15a sense confront him
07:16and say stop this this is nonsense um and he seized me by the by the tie and and pushed
07:22me against the wall
07:23and raised his fist were you scared my main uh feeling was one of self-preservation to get out of
07:29his
07:29clutches if if somebody in my business had assaulted somebody from a rival organization
07:36he'd have been summarily dismissed cummings stated that he and colin perry had stumbled into each other
07:44and in spite of an official complaint against him he kept his job
07:49cummings glamorized his long-term battle against the cbi in an article for the telegraph evoking the
07:55gun-toting american writer hunter s thompson as hunter s thompson wrote of tight ends and presidential
08:03elections real happiness in politics is a wide open hammer shot on some poor bastard who knows he's
08:10trapped but can't flee that's how we felt for three great years as we knocked the cbi out of the
08:17euro
08:18battle the euro skeptics were so successful at taking membership of the single currency entirely off the
08:23agenda uh that then the battle became about do you want britain to be a member of the european union
08:28at all dominic cummings has a 100 clear objective no half measures no going so far and then stopping
08:38it's all the way that is the both the magic and the richness of the man as well as his
08:44sort of horror
08:46cummings had seen the power in using provocative statistics
08:50and had discovered new ways to reframe his message for the public
08:55it was the first step in changing the face of eurosceptic campaigning
09:06it's a huge labor victory the tory is exactly where they were before
09:11ian duncan smith is the new leader of the conservative party in a ballot of more than
09:15300 000 tory members he received 61 of the total so i don't think there was huge excitement when ian
09:23duncan smith became leader
09:28just did not feel as if he was going to be the person who was going to lead the party
09:33to victory
09:36the conservatives were looking for someone to head up uh strategy and communications and dominic just
09:42just arrived dominic cummings suddenly joins in duncan smith as his head of strategy where on earth did
09:49that come from why it was a natural person to hire suddenly the man behind the no euro campaign
09:54bringing him in and he'll be able to transform the prospects and the future of the conservative party
10:00they hadn't really had much of a strategy and it was clear what terrible problems they had
10:05both in terms of the message the messenger and the machine it was a great advice from michael
10:11corleone in the godfather never hate your enemies it affects your judgment a lot of tories really hate
10:18blair and it's prevented them from examining how to try and present the conservative party as a serious
10:27alternative
10:28cummings who claims never to have belonged to a political party now sat at the heart of the tory
10:34establishment dominic cummings walked in shirt hanging out scarf wild hair and summed up the scale of the
10:43problem his diagnosis was you were going to have to have some shock treatment in order to shift people's
10:54perceptions
10:55cummings arranged for duncan smith to travel up to easter house in glasgow a traditional labor heartland
11:04the idea of a traditional conservative so pitching up to one of the worst housing states
11:10in britain was completely unexpected that's where he brought that unconventional thinking
11:18that of course it's going to be harder to persuade people who voted labor all their lives to come
11:24over but actually why not but cummings did little to inspire confidence in the party's leader you'd be
11:32invited from time to time to go in and have an off the record lunch and often it would be
11:37ian duncan
11:37smith sitting at one end of the table looking like a a kind of recently sacked undertaker and cummings would
11:44berate him and the tory party for as long as he could get away with it was like the young
11:49princeling
11:50was was humiliating his uncle in front of you know mildly embarrassed guests a contingent of tory
11:59mps wanted the party to take the lead on the continuing campaign against the euro but cummings
12:05believed the conservatives would do the cause more harm than good and gave an explosive interview to the
12:11independent for many people just about the only thing less popular than the euro is the tory party
12:19how did that message go down um it didn't go down very well but then realism very rarely goes down
12:26well
12:27within the party dominic cummings was outspoken this week uh did you did you talk to him about it
12:34and encourage him to keep on doing that or encourage him to stop all my advisors i talk to you
12:38regularly and
12:39uh clearly uh what i think was being said and is being said and is obviously being debated is uh
12:44what
12:45our position is it's vintage cummings i mean it was sort of punk rock uh activism uh in a party
12:54that
12:55was desperately seeking stability and um consistency of message i remember meeting him at that time and
13:01dominic being dominic he sort of looked rather grumpy and said i'd do it all again exactly the same way
13:08coming's time as director of strategy came to a close after just eight months
13:14it was in a way pure dom he he ended up falling out with people but then to his credit
13:18he politely
13:19left the building and well maybe probably not politely being done well what we're asking what's gone
13:24wrong for ian dongan smith one of the things was possibly what you've been saying about him you said he
13:30was incompetent yeah well i gave him a year to try and prove himself to see whether or not uh
13:34i was
13:35wrong it seems to me there's some kind of nightmare of the living dead scenario in which he clings on
13:40over the next 18 months of the election almost nothing could be grimmer than that prospect somehow
13:45the tory party has got to get a grip on basic competence this farce has gone on far too long
13:51okay
13:52dominant coming thank you very much indeed that phone was probably what conservative central office
13:56telling you get down there quick and face some kind of disciplinary reaction well i think they
14:02gave up on that a while ago i think okay many thanks cheers it all seemed a bit a bit
14:07haywire
14:08fascinating um sparks flying bits of plaster coming off the ceiling it made great copy but i think that
14:15when he he left um duncan smith's employ you wondered whether you'd hear of him again in in in mainstream
14:23political life cummings had seen earlier than most that the party needed to revamp its image to reach
14:30new voters in the regions of the uk but his explosive approach meant he now found himself on the outside
14:47again for the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won and we stand today
14:55on the edge of a new frontier the new frontiers foundation was dom's attempt to create a think
15:01tank that would run its own campaigns it showed a different way forward for the center-right of the uk
15:06and it combined a euroscepticism with spending public money wisely the new frontier is here whether
15:15we seek it or not i'm asking each of you to be pioneers towards that new frontier they tried to
15:23dress
15:23it up with jfk references but it was incredibly ideological it was incredibly frank about its right-wing views
15:33founded in 2003 the new frontiers foundation reimagined britain's place in the world questioning our
15:41membership of the single market and suggesting a possible free trade deal with the us you see a lot
15:47of dominic cummings's actual core belief in really quite radical deregulation it tells you a lot about his
15:54real instincts as far as health and education are concerned the foundation stated politicians should
16:02not be trusted with things as crucial to the nation's future as education and health i suspect that that
16:10early work will prove prophetic i think dom is ideologically very very right-wing and the fact
16:17that he's doesn't usually talk about that is uh him being strategic and thoughtful about how to win the
16:23electorate in any given moment with the new frontiers foundation it was almost sort of like he uh let
16:28his hair down kicked his feet back and said what he actually thought for a for a few months
16:34the new frontiers foundation under dominic cummings directorship released a publication called
16:40how demographic decline and its financial consequences will sink the european dream
16:46it read the consequences of economic stagnation coinciding with rising muslim immigration cannot fill
16:54anyone familiar with european history with anything other than a sense of apprehension at least about
17:01the future of the continent the summer of 2002 um we went i think to santini it's a very expensive
17:11italian
17:11restaurant and he said there's the we are seeing the biggest tribal movement of peoples ever from the
17:20east to the west and that was the word tribal which hit me it's an idea which has become since
17:28quite
17:28commonplace uh with in neo-fascist thinkers uh populist thinkers was he worried about western culture being
17:40eroded i think that was there this was something outside something well tribal hostile even i i think
17:48there's been an incredible uh poisoning of right-wing politics in this country i think there is a really
17:54dangerous and unpleasant world view about uh islam in particular uh that is incredibly worrying for
18:02our country i don't think you can blame dom alone for that uh coarsening of politics but he's certainly
18:07taken advantage of it the new frontiers foundation failed to make an impact on mainstream conservative
18:14politics it was yet another full start for dominic cummings the much more spiky aggressive
18:23intellectualism of someone like dominic cummings didn't have a role to play or so it seemed
18:33to have a role to play under tony blair the referendum's on everything whether there should
18:40be a london mayor whether the northern ireland peace process should carry on and so on and so on
18:44scotland has a parliament wales has an assembly and london has a mayor now three regions in the north
18:50of england could get their own assemblies millions of people are going to be asked whether they'd like a
18:55dedicated assembly working just for their area our proposals today will give the regions of england
19:01new choices new powers and a new voice and by liberating the potential of our regions we will be
19:08helping britain to prosper in 2004 dominic cummings traveled up to his native durham to join the northeast
19:17says no campaign against a regional assembly dominic would usually come up at the weekend we'd meet up
19:23a drink in the pub and sort of bounce ideas around i've used the phrase um strategy advisor to
19:30describe his role he was more in the shadow than the trench there's very much um a testing ground for
19:37a possible um e referendum at some point in that down the line so just talk me through this at
19:43dominic
19:44cummings is is using one referendum basically as an intellectual fertile hunting ground for another
19:53dominic believed in that issue he didn't want a northeast assembly but it was a way of testing
19:58out ideas and campaign techniques for that future referendum campaign
20:06the only way of winning was as a people versus politicians campaign and in every age and nation
20:12there is a certain market for that but we were getting towards the time where that was becoming
20:18especially pronounced remember 1997 we were told that things can only get better but politicians have
20:28failed us we were going to be running an anti-politician message um there is no point in striking to
20:34wound
20:34you either kill someone or you ignore them i think the effect on the other side was was rather
20:39like putting a hamster in a food blender uh dead now politicians want even more power for themselves
20:51by creating a regional assembly made up of more full-time professional politicians they were discovering
20:58new ways of whipping up public opinion you know anti-establishment anti-elite
21:04uh anti-politicians anti-those in power the establishment simply couldn't see this mood of anti-politics
21:13coming did it feel an anti-westminster campaign there was certainly a big sentiment at the time that
21:20was anti-westminster we had a load of 50 pound notes printed saying politicians talk we pay we went down
21:28to dominic's uncle's farm and in one of the tractor buckets we ended up burning hundreds and hundreds
21:35of these 50 pound notes just to show the more politicians you have the more they cost would you
21:41say this was the first really populist campaign in modern britain yes these messages might be called
21:46by some people populist i would call um arguments and feelings that represented what people in the north
21:54east and elsewhere outside london were thinking it was very clear very early on that we'd won a
22:02thumping majority we'd actually vindicated a particular approach to running a campaign cummings wrote
22:07we won the 2004 referendum with every force in the northeast hostile it was a training exercise that
22:15turned out surprisingly well the referendum in the northeast was the first howl of fury which was saying
22:21that london was becoming too much like a country unto itself it was so to speak an unaddressed issue
22:27that was bound to come back and haunt someone further down the line cummings now had his first
22:33referendum victory behind him and had seen firsthand how a disillusionment with politicians
22:39could be harnessed to mobilize support for a campaign
22:47i now declare david cameron to be the duly elected leader of the conservative party
22:56when david cameron came in he clearly was a very different sort of conservative
23:02i said when i launched my campaign that we needed to change in order to win
23:09now that i've won we will change he thought unless we make dramatic change we are seriously
23:16never going to get back to power in 2007 michael gofer was appointed as the shadow secretary of state
23:23for education and he'd asked dominic cummings to be his chief of staff this sort of guy turned up
23:31like he'd been dragged through a hedge backwards and so the first thing he said to me was i don't
23:35know anything about education could you start from scratch they have a kind of uh butch and sundance
23:42style kind of relationship where they egg each other on let's get the fight started someone count
23:47one two three go one two three go they almost didn't need to speak to each other they they were
23:56so much um on the same wavelength for both cummings and michael gove their first taste of government
24:03was tantalizingly close her majesty the queen has asked me to form a new government and i have
24:14accepted i aim to form a proper and full coalition between the conservatives and the liberal democrats
24:24after the election in 2010 dominic went with michael gove to number 10 and stood outside whilst
24:30michael went in to be appointed by david cameron everyone thought that they'd just be going together
24:35to the department and in the conversation uh david cameron said to michael one condition for you
24:41having this role is that you can't have dominic andy coulson has sort of given me this advice that
24:48he's just too dangerous he's too off message and he'll cause us too many problems andy coulson
24:55didn't want him in there because he could see that cummings was someone who had very little respect
25:00for the center of power and he probably in terms of david cameron's uh well-being made a correct
25:06judgment call he still turned up quite a lot he was however enormously frustrated during that period
25:13it was the most unhappy i ever saw him because he didn't have any formal power or control
25:19cummings hopes had been dashed and he was out in the wilderness again
25:25the prime minister's director of communications andy coulson has resigned he's been under intense
25:31pressure over allegations of phone hacking by the news of the world when he was the paper's editor
25:39andy coulson's departure was a sliding doors moment for cummings
25:45david cameron now gave the go-ahead for cummings to join michael gove at the department for education
25:52i remember visiting michael gove's office he had and very proudly displayed a rather beautiful black and
25:59white print of malcolm x its symbolism was clear which was by any means necessary i think they both had
26:09belief that that history changes by conflict and that that incremental change never really works
26:17and i think they encouraged that strain of thought in in each other
26:23cummings led the charge in taking on what he and michael gove called the blob
26:30it was a very good general way to denigrate any opposition however well informed and however well
26:36evidenced like the blob it descends and it suffocates and it crushes people so you're suffocating hope
26:48dominic cummings found confirmation of his beliefs about the slow dreary entropic nature
26:55of bureaucracy he spotted it everywhere he spotted it in every cupboard he spotted it around every
27:01corner in every corridor you've had this huge system in in in whitehall uh in my opinion it's largely
27:08dysfunctional the whole wiring of it means that you're going to keep seeing the same kind of problem
27:12over and over again cummings would later write about the need to shake up bureaucracies seldom does
27:19a political institution demonstrate high performance such incidents sometimes terrifying are generally
27:26ascribed to the happenstance of a particular individual often described as an evil genius
27:32mr president i would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens
27:39once they vanish institutions tend to revert to type and little is learned
27:47he wrote on his blog that sometimes you need an evil genius to come in was that how
27:52he saw himself dominic cummings yes i think he definitely did i was at one meeting with michael gove
27:59and dominic cummings halfway through stormed into the room wearing no shoes and draped himself over a
28:05chair and just sat there uh whistling to himself and looking at me with complete contempt it was an
28:12attempt to intimidate me allegations of bullying were made against dominic cummings and another colleague
28:19by a civil servant in the department you have direct responsibility for the management of your spuds
28:25it was i understand the case that the allegations of bullying um were found to be unfounded would you
28:34call him a bully i would yes shouting losing his temper i i would say that that behavior is reprehensible
28:42in
28:42the highest degree he wants a strong um you know clear good and evil story so in education the unions
28:51were
28:52evil the local authorities are evil the problem for them is that you end up losing natural eyes
28:59it led to clashes with the civil service it led to clashes with the teaching profession
29:04and it led to clashes with the tories coalition partners the lib dems
29:10on the day the 2012 olympics started he decided to stick out that teachers would no longer need to be
29:18qualified to work in state schools and academies which within the sector is an extremely provocative
29:24thing to do the department for education says the move will allow more schools to bring in brilliant
29:29people who are experts in their field the national union of teachers has described the decision as
29:35perverse did it set up barriers if people thought that it was a leaky ship it certainly reduced trust
29:41and made the whole relationship much more difficult so early on michael gov and nick clegg got on very
29:47well but as these announcements kept happening the trust just disappeared and it got to the point where
29:54their nick clegg um actually sent an advisor to sit in the office to monitor him all the time
30:02look there you you have this from time to time in politics you have people who aren't sort of elected
30:07or anything you don't have any authority of their own and when they get a sort of backroom advisor's
30:11job it all slightly goes to their head it was getting too troublesome and problematic and there
30:17were too many the critics were piling up well i remember him telling me about four months before
30:21he left that he was planning to leave he does have an attention deficit issue and frankly he tends to
30:26move on to the next thing cummings had gained an insight into the inner workings of the political machine
30:33but had failed to build alliances as he had done with ian duncan smith before him cummings left
30:40prematurely on his own again he created a blog to voice his radical ideas for the future of government
30:52i'm i'm happily unemployed very happy unemployed at the moment
31:03i think we need to do things differently the current systems just don't work and we need new ones
31:11he is a radical anti-establishment thinker cummings time in government convinced him that the
31:20political system was fundamentally broken and that nothing short of radical overhaul could transform it
31:29into what he called a high performance institution
31:35for solutions he looked not to politicians but to mavericks and rule breakers
31:40who've taken bold risks to achieve their grand visions
31:47the engineers who paved the way for the moon landings george muller turned the failing nasa
31:54bureaucracy into an organization that could put man on the moon
31:57yes indeed they've got the flag up now
32:00the computer scientists who developed the internet how do we get rid of all the wires and build something
32:07different and the creators of the first nuclear weapons if lawmakers knew how the manhattan project and
32:16apollo were done the lack of legal process things happening with a mere handshake they would be stunned
32:25a lot of these models are very militaristic top-down quite macho ideas of government
32:33consistently throughout his blogs and throughout his approach
32:36is a decision to say this system is broken and the best way to deal with it
32:40is to creatively destroy it and rebuild from scratch
32:46cummings now presented his own vision for a new body aimed at advances in science and technology
32:52based on the u.s organization darpa darpa was set up as part of the u.s panic about sputnik
33:00we should create a civilian version of darpa aimed at high risk high impact breakthroughs for it to work
33:08it would have to operate outside all existing eu procurement rules otherwise it would be as
33:16dysfunctional as the rest of the system he thinks doing exciting things with clever people is applicable
33:24across the whole range of human activity and a lot of the way government operates makes that difficult
33:29rather than easier and that's the primary reason why he actually wanted to leave the eu
33:35he quoted the communist revolutionary vladimir lenin sometimes nothing happens in decades
33:42and sometimes decades happen in weeks big changes are possible if people are prepared
34:01three years ago i committed to the british people that i would renegotiate our position
34:06in the european union and hold an in-out referendum now i'm delivering on that commitment
34:13you will decide and whatever your decision i will do my best to deliver it
34:21by 2016 cameron was feeling pretty unbeatable he had the sense that it would be all right
34:29matt elliott came to me and said we need a campaigner and i said do it dominic is the best
34:36in the business we don't want him too much front of house he doesn't always disguise his view of
34:42politicians but we definitely want him running the strategy dom is very very good at you know
34:49really digging down into the research doing a lot of polling doing a lot of focus groups really
34:55getting his mind into what the public are thinking in brexit the uncivil war cummings is
35:02depicted developing the slogan that changed everything take control i like it simple clear
35:13empowering brilliant it's presented as a moment of genius the truth is more prosaic when i did the
35:21euro campaign 15 years before we we developed the slogan then of keep the pound keep control
35:27and we never could beat that take back control take back control take back control take back
35:33control take back control take back control their ideas their memes their arguments had been road
35:38tested and finally and perfectly calibrated and tuned by the time we get to the referendum
35:43the remain side would make it up as they went along you're a pretty central figure to the stronger in
35:49campaign did you feel at that point you were running completely different asymmetric campaigns i think
35:57we realized very very early on that we were in trouble there was going to be a guerrilla war
36:02campaign against us where people just ran out of the jungle through a bomb and then ran away
36:07every week we send 350 million pounds to brussels money that's wasted that's enough to build a new hospital
36:16every week the reason why we sometimes said send was because we wanted to try and provoke the rage of
36:22the in campaign into getting into a fight about the whole thing and happily for us um that's what they
36:27did again the use of contested figures on the famous vote leave bus had its seed in the anti-euro
36:36campaign
36:3715 years earlier our point was they brought to public attention that membership of the eu was expensive
36:45and the fact that people were arguing back and forth about exactly how expensive it was well that was
36:49part of the magic of it that was part of the genius of the discussion but the campaign was about
36:54to
36:54step up a gear dominic humming's great skill is to understand the psychology of normal people
37:02basically probing their fears and making sure that the things that they're concerned and worried about
37:07are put front and center imagine what will happen to public services when albania macedonia montenegro
37:14serbia and turkey join the eu it was not true that turkey is going to imminently join the eu and
37:22as
37:22a result 80 million people could flood into this country and yet systematically and consistently that
37:28was presented as a truth and that was a real problem did you ever feel that in the interests of
37:34victory he was perhaps trying to appeal to people's nastier darker instincts no i don't think that's
37:42a fair characterization he's he's very much a a global britian guy so how did that fit in with with
37:48turkey joining the eu then i don't really remember turkey being that much of an issue you don't remember
37:54dominic cummings telling people to get the message out by saying turkey 350 million turkey 350 million
38:00those are your twin messages no i think our our absolute message was take back control
38:06dominic cummings allies say that actually the turkey claims played a very little insignificant part in
38:13that whole campaign oh it was huge and i don't think there's any debate about it that if you look
38:17on the record dominic cummings and others have made clear that they knew that turkey was incendiary
38:23it was front and center in terms of all of their advertising in terms of their social media
38:29we basically dumped the entire budget uh or in the last 10 days and really in the last three or
38:37four days roughly about seven million people saw something like one and a half billion digital ads
38:51vote leave defied the opinion polls to achieve a historic victory 82 000
39:00what are we doing taking back control but for cummings it was the synthesis of years of training
39:08in how to defeat the political establishment you guys did this and you're always remembered
39:16at that moment when we were triumphant when we had against all the odds won this extraordinary victory
39:26there was this deep-seated exhaustion the culmination of a 15 maybe even 20 year campaign
39:35vote leave was fined for campaign overspending and cummings was later held in contempt of parliament
39:43for refusing to appear at a select committee on fake news there is a supreme irony here that the the
39:51mastermind of the leave campaign whose sole raison d'etre was all about parliamentary sovereignty about
39:58taking back control is actually turning his back on this place uh in a show of arrogance and contempt
40:06that cannot go unmarked and unpunished here here
40:12cummings had long seen brexit as the starting point in a radical reshaping of britain
40:20and as david cameron left downing street the prospect of a vote leave government seemed a real possibility
40:29dominic cummings was exhausted wanted to go on holiday match made michael gove and boris johnson
40:37together said boris you're the leader michael you're supporting him go and win the leadership
40:43campaign but i want no part of it i'm going on holiday and off he went he fully expected to
40:48come
40:48back and be a leading light in negotiating a brexit deal and it didn't happen
40:56it would be theresa may and not boris johnson who took the reins
41:01cummings was now powerless to direct britain's future there was a period where he had to convince
41:08other people that it was all being done badly and then there was a period of kind of irascible
41:14despair and comedy that it was being done quite so badly and then i think he knuckled down to business
41:20and started thinking about well this isn't going to work it's not going to last so what comes next
41:26biding his time cummings took unlikely inspiration from jean monet the founder of the european union
41:35monnet showed that if ideas are developed in advance then sometimes they're grabbed by powerful
41:41people searching for a path in short-term crises
41:55i will shortly leave the job that it has been the honor of my life to hold
42:00i do so with no ill will but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity
42:08to serve the country i love
42:13tonight at 10 boris johnson launches his campaign to become the next prime minister
42:22we must come out on the 31st of october
42:26i'm not thinking about promises for the next 15 days i'm thinking about the next 15 years
42:31during the leadership campaign last summer you found yourself
42:35having dim sum lunch with dom cummings and what happened this intense looking figure turned up
42:41he said you've got to say that you're going to do three things you're going to
42:46beat jeremy corbyn reunite the country get brexit done those are your three things
42:53and i thought that's really good how brilliant so then the next day
42:56i then see sahaja javid tweeting out there are three things we need to do and then the day after
43:01boris there are three things we need to do and jeremy hunt there are three things we need to do
43:05he wanted influence he wanted to change the country and he didn't mind too much
43:10which vessel it was or who won
43:15when it became clear that boris johnson was likely to be the prime minister
43:18um there was a big wooing operation get the old gang back together but cummings was only prepared
43:24to work for boris on his terms he wanted to be in charge of all the special advisors and he
43:29was not
43:29prepared to have someone over his head in downing street and his argument to johnson was the only
43:35way you get brexit on the terms that you want is if you do it my way and boris johnson
43:41had seen
43:41dominic cummings in action and he wanted that at the heart of his government we're going to fulfill
43:48the repeated promises of parliament to the people and come out of the eu on october the 31st
43:55no ifs or buts
44:01as boris johnson entered downing street dominic cummings was ready and waiting to take up his
44:07new position as the prime minister's most senior advisor so he enters number 10 on the day that boris
44:15johnson becomes prime minister did that surprise you it didn't surprise me that boris turned to him
44:21he can do the market research he can do the the comms like alistair campbell could he can organize
44:27things based on his time at the department of education so really his skill set spans all the
44:33different areas you need to run an effective machine
44:40cummings now had his hands on the levers of power
44:44it was clear from the very start that dominic was in control
44:49i am not a morning person so to be summoned to a 7 55 am meeting even at 10 downing
44:55street was not
44:56something i was massively thrilled about dominic stood at the front and he told us
45:01if you leak you will be marched from your desk by the head of security at your department your
45:07pass will be taken off you and you will be sacked you have no rights on the 29th of august
45:14cummings threats were realized sajid javid's aide sonia khan was called to number 10 after coming
45:22suspected her of leaking government plans to philip hammond sonia khan was brought in without notice
45:29to see dominic cummings and within a matter of minutes was dismissed with an accusation of of
45:36leaking there was no process there she had no ability to defend herself she was escorted from
45:41the building under armed police escort she was humiliated essentially in front of civil servants
45:46and then what followed was a doubling down of that by anonymous briefings from number 10. so this is clearly
45:54bullying behavior from dominant cummings and i think sent shock waves across the civil service
46:00word spread like wildfire across the whatsapp groups and it was very clear from what happened
46:05with sonia khan the dominant meant business you do what you're told and if you don't do what you're
46:10told then there would be severe consequences people around the prime minister should not need fear
46:17to control to control individuals cummings soon had bigger targets in his sights the headlines to
46:27tory mps who are threatening to block a no-deal brexit have been warned they face being thrown out of
46:32the
46:32conservative parliamentary party and barred from standing at the next election dominic cummings
46:39frequently mentioned dominic grieve greg clark david gawk people in his mind who were frustrating the will of
46:47the people i just caught dominic cummings in parliament and he said we've got to clean the
46:53bums out we've got to clean people out and i thought yeah yeah it makes kind of sense and then
46:58as he walked away i thought wait a second i'm one of those i'm one of those bums that's being
47:02cleaned
47:02out greg clark got a phone call from dominic cummings and was told in no uncertain terms you effing
47:11people need to learn that this is what we're doing there was a sort of tone there which was more
47:16like a u.s gangster movie don't you get it we're just trying to purge you quite a few people
47:23said
47:23well if that's going to be the way you want to play it i'm not going to be intimidated the
47:29eyes to the
47:30right 328 the nose to the left 301. two former conservative chancellors are among 21 rebels who have
47:43been suspended from the party tonight after helping to defeat boris johnson in a key brexit vote we were
47:49out within an hour of the vet this suited the cummings maoist confrontation narrative this was politics in
47:59the raw it seemed to represent a new style of politics from number 10 nothing including the
48:06stoking of huge divisions within the party was going to stop the government from enacting what
48:12they saw as the will of the people do you think there was any worry from boris johnson's side about
48:20seeing the whip removed he must have been convinced that he needed to throw his whole weight behind
48:26dominic cummings and it must have felt like a white knuckle ride at times for cummings it was a return
48:32to the people versus politicians strategy that he'd hammered home in the northeast with boris johnson
48:39presented as the voice of the people and this narrative was about to get heavy duty
48:48there's no doubt in my mind that on brexit specifically dominic saw parliament as an
48:53impediment to the will of the people i was a remainer my side lost i got over that in a
48:59couple of
48:59hours the dominic graves of this world clearly did not
49:07rumors spread through westminster that the government planned to close down parliament for several weeks
49:12a move known as prorogation
49:17i got leaks from within government of people who started becoming really alarmed about what was being
49:25proposed and it was clear from them that this was coming from dominic cummings this was for me the
49:30declaration of war
49:36on the 10th of september politics entered turmoil as parliament was officially prorogued
49:42this is not however a normal prorogation it is not difficult it is not standard and it represents
49:50an active executive fiat proroguing parliament was about closing down the people we elect to debate
49:59and scrutinize so the government would have had no opposition
50:06clearly boris johnson was convinced by the argument that dominic cummings made parliament standing in
50:12the way of the will of the people i think it's a very dangerous rhetoric it is clearly populist in
50:19its
50:19nature it was the point where we thought this is a government that will stop at almost nothing
50:25to achieve a particular objective there was definitely a lot of worry a lot of
50:31jitteriness among special advisors in terms of what was going to happen dominic stood at the front of the
50:39friday meeting and said you've got to be as he put it cool like fonsies about this
50:46the government was hauled up in front of the highest court in the land
50:50to determine if its actions had been legal the effect on the fundamentals of our democracy was
50:58extreme no justification for taking action with such an extreme effect has been put before the court
51:07the court is bound to conclude therefore that the decision to advise her majesty to prorogue parliament
51:14was unlawful i think the prorogation was an unusual and unwanted misstep but boris and dominic
51:24then did something very smart and very quick which is they used the crisis to their advantage
51:32and repositioned the party as the only voice for all of the levers
51:39i did then get the distinct impression that the number 10 press machine started to go on the war
51:46path there was a briefing to the mail on sunday saying that oliver letwin myself and hillary ben
51:52were in the pay of foreign governments if dominic cummings wasn't responsible for it
51:57then all i can say is that the number 10 press office has run completely out of control
52:03this was politics being conducted by number 10 downing street in a manner that i don't think i've
52:09ever seen in my lifetime and i hope i never see again when number 10 moved from the gentle art
52:15of of
52:16spin into actually turning itself into a a lie machine for propaganda purposes
52:24what i see is a populist prime minister aided by an equally populist advisor
52:31hell-bent on achieving what they want to achieve by any means necessary and this is this is populism
52:37in its purest form there is a widespread view that this parliament has run its course and that is
52:46and that is because i simply do not believe that this house is capable of delivering on the priorities
52:53of the people whether that means brexit or anything else there was a huge standoff the majority of the
53:01parliamentary party thought an election would be bad idea but dominic was pushing very hard to hold it and
53:06it worked
53:13and please have given their backing to a december general election designed to break the deadlock
53:17over brexit voters will go to the polls for the third time in five years
53:23boris johnson and dominic cummings had got the election they wanted the people versus politicians
53:30narrative would now be tested at the polls for the cummings slogan at the center of the campaign
53:36having in 2016 argued that brexit would be a massive boost to britain
53:45he completely dumped that message for the 2019 election and said essentially isn't brexit
53:53a pain let's just get it done get brexit done get brexit done get brexit done
54:02and when the conservative manifesto was launched it seemed to bear many of the hallmarks of dominic
54:08cummings in this manifesto there is a vision for the future and where in 10 years time scientists
54:16are starting to reap the huge rewards from our plans to double spending on research from ai to new
54:24spaceports in cornwall and scotland that will send british made satellites into the heavens and drive
54:31one of our most exciting industries the manifesto promised a new agency long dreamt of by cummings
54:39for high risk high payoff research at arm's length from government and echoing cummings war on the civil
54:47service the manifesto stated we need to get away from the idea that whitehall knows best
54:55came back to work with all of the new people who do not什ottes good but which we will have
54:56now sought to bring on board the traditional labour supporters who'd voted for brexit days after the 2016
55:03referendum i emailed all of you to say thanks for your heroic efforts i also said keep an eye on
55:11my blog
55:11if brexit is in danger then i will send up a bat signal here here we go
55:18what cummings has recognised is that people are beginning to think differently
55:23The traditional party allegiances are now weaker predictors
55:27of how people are going to vote.
55:29Boris Johnson leads the Conservatives
55:31to a resounding election victory.
55:34They win their largest majority since the Thatcher years,
55:38gaining scores of seats from Labour.
55:42Outside number ten, Cummings' people versus politicians' narrative
55:45was echoed by the Prime Minister.
55:48But here in this people's government,
55:50the work is now being stepped up
55:52to deliver a parliament that works for the people.
55:56I remember the meeting immediately afterwards.
56:00I actually stood up at the back of the room and I said,
56:02Dominic, six months ago you said we would get Brexit done,
56:07we would have an election and we would win a majority.
56:09I thought that was actually pretty counterintuitive.
56:13I was 100% wrong, you were 100% right,
56:16thank you very much and Merry Christmas.
56:19Winning the election has not stopped Cummings from taking to his blog.
56:25He provoked controversy by posting an eccentric job advert,
56:29calling for data scientists, policy experts and assorted weirdos
56:34to join him in government.
56:37What he actually wants to do is set up the Avengers.
56:44It's a curious, slightly juvenile, initially endearing but ultimately exasperating longing
56:51to get out of the structures of government that actually make a country run
56:55and have this kind of super-powered group that will make everything brilliant immediately.
57:03Throughout his 20-year career, Cummings has walked right into the centre of conflict
57:08and his sometimes brutal approach to politics has tested even his closest allies.
57:14But in spite of all this, he has the ear of the Prime Minister.
57:19Is the British approach to the coronavirus right?
57:23I can't talk to you today, guys.
57:25Cummings' dream of reshaping the country is now hostage to unfolding events
57:30as the country faces one of its greatest peacetime challenges.
57:33I must level with you, level with the British public.
57:38More families, many more families, are going to lose loved ones before their time.
57:46Now Cummings' ability to capture the public mood, read human nature,
57:51will be tested like never before in a world he can no longer control.
57:58He should perhaps return to the words of Otto von Bismarck,
58:02founder of the German Empire, whom he quotes on his own blog.
58:07Politics is a job that can be compared with navigation in uncharted waters.
58:13One has no idea how the weather or the currents will be
58:17or what storms one is in for.
58:20In politics, there's the added fact that one is largely dependent
58:24on the decisions of others.
58:27And if the friends on whose support one is relying change their minds,
58:31the whole plan miscarries.
58:33And if you're here to come along, please feel free to is,
58:38have a great idea.
58:39Thank you very much.
58:39I'm Daniel Paul and I'll be here to show you the rest of your life.
58:39Hey, I'm Daniel Paul and I'll be here to just to be with you all.
58:39How long have you come along?
58:45Have a good day.
58:51I'll be here to be here.
58:54I'll be here to go next.
58:57Bye to you guys.
59:02You