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The Startup Party: Time to Build from September and replace the Tories? - Dominic Cummings (dominiccummings.substack.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

no grip of power, the Cabinet Office a dumpster fire and no No10 plan to fix it, No10 given the run-around by Whitehall as soon as the PM’s office switches from one disaster to the next
no governing plan for the NHS, crime, the war, productivity growth, R&D or anything else — just nightmarish Treasury budget/Spending Review processes that vandalise long-term building and entrench the dangerous rot of critical national capabilities
no message
no serious polling, communication or political machine (just incoherent jabbering to the media per the Tory model of ‘communication’ for decades)
no political strategy worth spit (current approach is indistinguishable from ‘annoy everyone’)
a humiliatingly awful level of argument from No10 on every major issue (reduced to defending idiot MPs telling people to ‘fuck off’ out of frustration that their own policy, which officials and their own spads told them couldn’t work, has turned into the predicted fiasco)
political disintegration

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I find it hard to imagine a group of people who could be more damaging to the British people than our current government without the express purpose of doing so. unfortunately due to the innate corruption that come from a desire for power and the want to be a politician in particular I have no doubt that whoever takes charge next will show that to be incorrect and a lack of imagination on my part.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I wouldn’t doubt their ingenuity, creativity and imagination either!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This was funny:

current approach is indistinguishable from ‘annoy everyone’

The first problem with Cummings is he had his shot at implementing his theory of government and got outsmarted and outmanouevered by people who were, according to him, idiots. This doesn't say much about his abilities.

The second problem with Cummings is that, again, according to him there exists a cadre of people who are thousands of times better at managing things than the rest of us. But it's clear from the first problem that he can't be one of them.

So, by his own logic, there are at least two reasons we shouldn't listen to him.

I see nothing in the blog to make me reevaluate this position. All the stuff he's right about is stuff everyone knows and has known for ages. He proproses no actual solutions. It's pie in the sky right wing contrarian Leninism, as usual. 'Found a new party, win an election, then dissolve the winning party'! Your average teenage anarchist has a better theory of change.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Posting this here “as is”; I’m generally centre / centre-left but read from all sorts of sources.

Thoughts?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a surprisingly interesting read actually. Funny to see how much of it is just a tactical game for power - though he does mention some "correct" points, you get the feeling it's a case of "we must do these things to gain and maintain power" rather than "we must do these things to improve the lives of the people".

Regarding his plan for a "new Tory alternative", whilst we still have a "First past the post" system, I'm fully supportive of anything that helps split up the Tory vote.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yes that move from “helping people” to “power” all seems a bit mercenary; unfortunately I think that’s what politics has descended into.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

He makes a lot of good points:

it’s roughly the Brown failure mode: a workaholic, the PM’s office a massive bottleneck and can’t sustain focus when the news shifts, the smartest MP but can’t build a team or lead etc etc

And that Starmer will follow this model. Starmer would make a good Home Secretary or Director General but not a PM.

I also like the idea of burying the Tory party and salting the earth, I just wonder what horrors he'd conjure up to replace them.

But... it's all a bit rich coming from Cummings:

per the Tory model of ‘communication’ for decades

He's criticising a lot of the things he was in control of at the time. Why anyone would trust him again is the big question. Other than desperation.