• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

Dominic Cummings Is No Reservoir Dog

by Richard Eldred
5 November 2023 7:00 PM

In UnHerd, Kathleen Stock provides a thoughtful analysis of Cummings’s testimony at the Covid Inquiry and the significance of language and communication style in politics, suggesting that focusing on how individuals express themselves at work is not tangential to the Inquiry’s main purpose. Here’s an excerpt:

It was Halloween on Tuesday, and over at the Covid Inquiry the party theme for witnesses seemed to be ‘Nineties crime movie’. Though the presumed intention of Dominic Cummings was to appear suitably funereal, in his white shirt and skinny black tie he put one in mind of an extra from Reservoir Dogs. And with exposure to his profanity-strewn emails and private messaging, spectators were plunged into a retro world of adolescent play-acting – quite possibly due to its protagonists watching too many mob movies at a formative age.

The preferred idiom was very sweary. According to Cummings’s communications from 2020, Government ministers and civil servants dealing with the Covid crisis were “useless fuckpigs”, “morons”, and “cunts”. Everyone mentioned seemed to have a nickname, as if planning a heist: “Sonic” the Hedgehog Special Advisor; “Frosty” the Snowman Minister of State at the Cabinet Office; “Trolley” the Problem Prime Minister, and so on.

Sexist bravado also apparently abounded, with Cummings threatening, in one exchange with Trolley and Director of Communications Lee Cain, to “personally handcuff” Deputy Cabinet Secretary Helen MacNamara and “escort her from the building”. In cadences reminiscent of a made man arranging concrete shoes for a troublesome foot soldier, Cummings continued: “We gotta get Helen out of [the Cabinet Office] She’s fucking up Frosty. She’s fucking up me and Case. She’s trying to get Spads fired and cause trouble on multiple fronts. Can we get her in Monday for chat re. her moving to [the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government]… we need her out ASAP. Building millions of lovely houses.”

Yet in the flesh at the Inquiry, Cummings was more penitent schoolboy than would-be gangster, apologising repeatedly for his previous “terrible” and “appalling” language. And the contrast was also stark with his written submission, in which, as others have also noted, he came across more like Adrian Mole than Harvey Keitel. (A characteristically mournful extract: “Although I was/am often described as ‘all powerful’ in No10 in 2020 this is false and very misleading regarding Covid… For example, in January 2020 I could not even stop Chris Grayling being appointed by the PM to chair the Commons intelligence committee”.)

Equally, when the next day MacNamara herself appeared at the Inquiry, giving us first sight of Cummings’s much-maligned female nemesis, the deep histrionics running through his communications about her became even more discernible. For if his own fictional lodestar seems to be Nineties Tarantino films, MacNamara’s seems to be Bridget Jones Diary – even down to the fact of having once brought a karaoke machine to a lockdown party at Downing Street. …

Some dissatisfaction has been expressed among the commentariat about the extent to which the Inquiry’s KCs – often sounding like gently disappointed headmasters – have focused on the bad language of dramatis personae like Cummings. Writing in the Spectator, witness Professor Carl Heneghan complained of the Inquiry that he “had submitted a 74-page statement on what I thought it should discuss. Instead the main topic was rude words in old WhatsApp messages”. For many, understandably tired of endless trivial complaints about hurt feelings stemming from inappropriate word choices, it perhaps feels like a capitulation to focus less on what a person said or did and more upon how, exactly, he said it.

Still, I don’t think that focusing on the way Cummings and others expressed themselves at work is wholly tangential to the main business of the Inquiry. For a person’s words are one of the main sources of evidence we have in judging their character, understood as a relatively fine-grained collection of personality traits. And there is a definite public interest in knowing which characters, precisely, are supposed to be running the country.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: CommunicationCovid InquiryDominic CummingsLanguagePandemic Response

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

How the Guardian and BBC Got Swept up in a Wave of Antisemitism

Next Post

News Round-Up

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

9 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

The Sceptic | Episode 41: David Shipley on the Rape Gangs Inquiry, Tom Jones on the Ballymena Riots and Ben Pile On Dimming the Sun

by Richard Eldred
20 June 2025
3

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

News Round-Up

21 June 2025
by Will Jones

This Pride Month, Who Will Protect Us From ‘Protect the Dolls’?

21 June 2025
by Steven Tucker

The Last Chance to Save Britain?

21 June 2025
by Sallust

NHS Staff Demand Right to Stop Working if it Gets Too Hot

20 June 2025
by Will Jones

Assisted Suicide to Become Law as MPs Back Bill by 23 Votes

20 June 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

52

The Last Chance to Save Britain?

19

NHS Staff Demand Right to Stop Working if it Gets Too Hot

22

Palestine Action Banned as Terrorist Organisation

16

Primary School Children Being “Sexualised” by Lessons on the “300 Flags of Pride”

9

The Last Chance to Save Britain?

21 June 2025
by Sallust

This Pride Month, Who Will Protect Us From ‘Protect the Dolls’?

21 June 2025
by Steven Tucker

Why Trump‘s ‘Gold Standard’ Executive Order is Essential to Restoring Truth in Science

20 June 2025
by Tilak Doshi

Universities Are a Conspiracy Against the Public

20 June 2025
by James Alexander

Iran Threatens Energy Market Meltdown as it “Reviews” Closure of Strait of Hormuz

19 June 2025
by Tilak Doshi

POSTS BY DATE

November 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Oct   Dec »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

POSTS BY DATE

November 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Oct   Dec »

DONATE

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

News Round-Up

21 June 2025
by Will Jones

This Pride Month, Who Will Protect Us From ‘Protect the Dolls’?

21 June 2025
by Steven Tucker

The Last Chance to Save Britain?

21 June 2025
by Sallust

NHS Staff Demand Right to Stop Working if it Gets Too Hot

20 June 2025
by Will Jones

Assisted Suicide to Become Law as MPs Back Bill by 23 Votes

20 June 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

52

The Last Chance to Save Britain?

19

NHS Staff Demand Right to Stop Working if it Gets Too Hot

22

Palestine Action Banned as Terrorist Organisation

16

Primary School Children Being “Sexualised” by Lessons on the “300 Flags of Pride”

9

The Last Chance to Save Britain?

21 June 2025
by Sallust

This Pride Month, Who Will Protect Us From ‘Protect the Dolls’?

21 June 2025
by Steven Tucker

Why Trump‘s ‘Gold Standard’ Executive Order is Essential to Restoring Truth in Science

20 June 2025
by Tilak Doshi

Universities Are a Conspiracy Against the Public

20 June 2025
by James Alexander

Iran Threatens Energy Market Meltdown as it “Reviews” Closure of Strait of Hormuz

19 June 2025
by Tilak Doshi

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment