| Notes |
Chief Adviser to Boris Johnson (since 2019)
Left Friday 13th November 2020
https://archive.vn/rLO1t
Effigy of Cummings as Boris Johnson's puppet-master at the People's Vote march, in October 2019
On 24 July 2019, Cummings was appointed as Chief Adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a new position created by Johnson, to replace the role of Downing Street Chief of Staff.[41][failed verification]
On his appointment, The Guardian reported that at a conference in 2017 Cummings had argued that: "People think, and by the way I think most people are right: 'The Tory party is run by people who basically don't care about people like me'"; and that "Tory MPs largely do not care about these poorer people. They don't care about the NHS. And the public has kind of cottoned on to that".[42]
The Daily Telegraph reported on Cummings's past rivalry with Nigel Farage from the 2016 referendum campaign, and quoted Farage as saying that: "He has never liked me. He can't stand the ERG. I can't see him coming to any accommodation with anyone. He has huge personal enmity with the true believers in Brexit".[43]
Cummings was accused by Layla Moran of hypocrisy when, not long after his appointment, it was reported that a farm that he co-owns had received €250,000 (£235,000) in EU farming subsidies. Cummings had previously described such subsidies as "absurd", complaining that some of them were handed out to "very rich landowners to do stupid things".[44]
In November 2019, a whistleblower raised questions about Cummings's interactions during his years in Russia; The Sunday Times reported that Whitehall was keeping certain government business from Cummings.[45]
As is customary procedure, Cummings temporarily resigned his role when Parliament dissolved for the 2019 general election, along with most special advisers, but was briefly reinstated to assist the government following widespread flooding.[46]
According to Politico, Cummings played a role in the Conservative Party's victory in the election,[47] after having passed the party's running of the election campaign to Isaac Levido. After the election, Cummings called for people interested in working in government to contact him through a private Gmail address. In a blog post, he said he wanted to recruit data scientists, software developers and economists to help improve the performance of government, making his own role "within a year largely redundant".[48] The recruitment drive was reported to have resulted in several appointments on short-term contracts, including Baroness Wolf of Dulwich, Professor Vernon Gibson and, briefly, Andrew Sabisky.[49] Sabisky resigned in February 2020 following complaints about his previously expressed views on race, intelligence and eugenics.[50] Will O'Shea, a data specialist appointed through Cummings' scheme, was fired in July 2020 after calling for police to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters with live ammunition.[51]
|