The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

> I've viewed and read an interminable number of interviews with Cummings.

The statements you have made don't really line up with the interviews I've listened to.

The context around the events and what his involvement was and was not, is important.

You are leaving out key information that he mentioned in many interview appearances.

> He decided that a) Brexit was a good idea (we can see how that turned out)

Without re-litigating everything. It may have been different if the politicians and those that worked for them hadn't frustrated the process. I was genuinely disgusted by the attitudes that many of the politicians had after the Leave won. That was my interpretation of what happened. Your obviously differs.

It also says nothing about the validity of his other statements, which is what I was referring to.

> b) he decided to help get a Johnson government elected

Yes, but the way you are talking about it is omitting events both before and after the 2019 General Election.

Theresa May had been ousted by the Conservative Leadership. Earlier she ran an awful election campaign, squandered a huge lead in the polls and had to form a coalition Government with the DUP to maintain a majority.

Cummins said he was contacted by Johnson because Johnson had a minority government and couldn't call a re-election. His first job was to get Johnson out of that Quagmire, then prepare for re-election. He decided to help Johnson under certain guarantees / conditions. Which tells me that he didn't actually trust Johnson.

He claims to have been gradually forced out by Carrie Johnson and his team shortly after the election.

If you are being hampered by the Prime Minster's wife on the agenda that you are supposed to implement. It is likely to fail.

I've actually experienced something similar in my career where I was being blocked (for political reasons) by another team. It makes getting anything done impossible.

So there is no reason to believe he is lying, back tracking or retconning events.

This is because his statements about Carrie Johnson's involvement line up with other accounts from other people that I've heard during the time period shortly after his departure.

> c) joined his administration as de facto chief of staff and chief advisor. If that's not a tacit approval of Johnson and his government, then what is? Of course, he backtracked later when it was a disaster.

It not about it being an approval or disapproval of his government. Often you must work with people that you would rather not to, to achieve things.

His feelings about the Johnson government doesn't change his the validity of his statements about how Whitehall operate while he was present.

His comments about ossified organisations lines up with my past experience of working in both ossified Public and Private orgs.

His account of the events around COVID match up with the timeline of events, and I re-watched old interviews of him and he hasn't backtracked at all or changed his story around what happened. He has mentioned things he couldn't mention at the time e.g. his residence was broken into and he was advised not to mention this at the time.

I have no reason to not believe him, since his statements match up with both what I have experienced and a known timeline of events.

I think your dislike of Cummins and his involvement with Vote Leave. As a result is clouding your judgement on the validity of his statements about how Boris Johnson behaved and how Whitehall operates.

Generally there is a lot of stuff in his interviews that I've seen that quite honestly changed my opinion of him (which was somewhat negative). I believe he is telling the truth.

Yes, though I'd be careful about assuming that votes are Conservatives Reform on a left-right median voter model. The other aspect that Reform has (and will have at least until it forms a government) is anti-system/populist credentials. Labour had a little of that last time (they are a deeply establishment party, especially under current leadership, but they were coming off a period as very public opposition to the government and the current state of things) but will have very little next time.

It's certainly not a given that all the 2024 Reform vote would have gone to the Conservatives: a good chunk of it would have likely been disgusted abstention, another chunk to other anti-system parties (mostly of the right fringe, I suspect, but not excluding the Greens despite wild ideological differences), and likely a further (if smaller) chunk to other parties which were simply not the Conservatives (including Labour and the Lib Dems).

Edit: the best analysis on this is likely to be in the latest volume of the long-standing The British General Election of XXXX series, which has just been published online[0]. I haven't had time to look at it yet, though.

[0]: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-95952-3

People are seemingly very unhappy with the status quo, but also even unhappier when the Government tries to legislate around real issues. For example, people in hacker news seem to bring up grooming rape gangs specifically when talking about "Diversity" in the UK as a cudgel when the UK tries to introduce safety laws.

Meanwhile some of the most prolific child abusers are being sent to jail (who happened to be young 20s and white) who were only enabled to abuse hundreds of young people over a matter of months due to online platforms.

The latter example is the type of thing the UK Government is trying to tackle. The abuse is rife, but people would rather talk about "Diversity" and complain about laws clearly designed to protect children.

Do I want the laws? No. But other people have ruined it, and now we no longer live in a high trust society. I certainly want something that will try to lower the abuse women and children face from the Internet (and men).

The "eating shit" fallacy as I like to call it.

Just because a fascist and a communist agree that eating shit is bad, doesn't mean that eating shit is a good idea.

Public money gets spent on the advice of AI systems and consultancies.

Costs overrun, benefits are unclear, and it quietly disappears.

Those responsible resurface later at consultancies, selling the same ideas elsewhere.