So much for Dominic Cummings being some kind of Machiavelli/Malcolm Tucker hybrid.
He’s been utterly out played by smarter, more experienced parliamentarians in 5 weeks in the job.
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Because he didn’t have to. If the U.S. was a Westminster system his vote would have resulted in removal from his political party, to either ‘cross the floor’ to the loyal opposition, or stand as an independent M.P. So the analogy is fair, in that McCain, like Lee, exercised a vote of non-confidence within the governing party. There was a time when I used to reckon that the U.S. tradition of not voting along party lines lended itself to non-partisan cooperation. These days, McCain’s stand notwithstanding, hyper-partisanship has taken hold and political deadlock is the result.
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Ins’t a Minister of State junior to a Secretary of State, but senior to an Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State-- which of course, is entirely different from a Parliamentary Private Secretary, or worse yet, a Permanant Secretary?
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It should be remembered that his reputation comes from advising Gove whilst he was in government, and then from the Leave campaign. Only one of those can be said to be a major success.
And the Leave campaign had the advantage of being the underdog, and being able to promise anything they liked as they didn’t assume they’d be the ones that would have to deliver it.
I understand he’s big on Game Theory. Which suggests to me that he underestimated the number of “sides”, and their motivations. He assumed he could keep everyone on the opposition divided, and forgot that some of the people he’d assumed were on his side weren’t.
But he’s also a Leaver, so it’s OK - he’ll blame someone else for this. If there’s one thing that the Leavers always do, it’s blame other people for failure. I wouldn’t like to be someone who works closely with Dominic - or Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson - over the next few days…
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You’re right, I should have said that Secretary of State is the title for a minister in charge of a department.
A permanent secretary is the most senior civil servant in a department.
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right now, Bernard Jenkins speaking about competing legitimacies, noting that the fixed term parliaments act pretty much had the opposite effect that it was intended to have. And of course, popular legitimacy competes with parliamentary legitimacy… He’s right about the premises, wrong about the conclusions (let Boris be Boris)
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The Grauniad liveblog (linked above) is fascinating, but I’m a little taken aback by so many MPs tweeting during the debate. Is that even allowed? It is like students facebooking during class.
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Unless the tweets are ghosted by their staff.
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A vote of Bo Confidence?
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Otherwise known as “pulling a Von Braun”
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I don’t think they’ve been deselected yet. Wouldn’t it be a mistake for BJ to do so? If they stay in the party, he might still get a majority in the election, but if he deselects them they can run as indies and their substitutes mostly won’t stand a chance.
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Oh it’s allowed alright. I used to take classes of History students on tours of our provincial legislature here in Canada. From the public gallery you could see members on Facebook, browsing real estate, you name it. They don’t have the decency to make eye contact when other members are speaking. Between the contempt they show for each other and the childish ridicule and guffawing, the atmosphere is one of an out of control middle-school class; I quit doing that field trip I was so embarrassed for the state of democracy.
I take it back, it looks like he’s really doing it. Hammond out. Soames – Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill! – out. Holy crap.
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Good. The faster the Conservatives fall so heavily on their own sword they can’t get up the better. And may the GOP follow.
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