28 Sept 2015

Silence of the Cummings

Yesterday I left a comment on Dominic Cummings' blog regarding Business for Britain and Matthew Elliott. After sitting in the pending queue for a number of hours, the comment was deleted by Mr Cummings without any reply to the points I raised.

At the time I was surprised and thought this was a bit precious, particularly as the word among some of the campaign groups who have had dealings with BfB was that Cummings was only helping to set up the Campaign to Leave and was then going to step away. I didn't think there was any close attachment. I heard from several people some months ago that Cummings had said he didn't want to have anything to do with the BfB because he didn't want to work with people (I paraphrase here) who were being idiotic.

Clearly time is a great healer because the Financial Times reported yesterday that the new Elliott campaign would feature Cummings as its campaign director. It's hard to keep up with the thinking of a man who changes his stated position more frequently than his underwear, and if I had realised Cummings had taken the Elliott pledge and joined the payroll, I wouldn't have bothered leaving the comment on his blog.

This explains why Cummings, who rarely passes up an opportunity to give people the benefit of his wisdom, silenced himself.

It stands to reason. He didn't want an upstart blogger genuinely committed to Brexit pointing out inconvenient truths about the contradictory position and financial interests of his friend and colleague Matt... particularly if that might make people aware of the things that could lead them to question whether supporting Elliott's new venture actually helps us towards Brexit in any way, or represents value for taxpayer and donor money.