DOMINIC Cummings is the chief special advisor to the Prime Minister and the undisputed hard man of Downing Street. If you want a junior researcher brought to the verge of tears or a rogue office plant berated for its failure to “f**king GROW!” then he’s your go-to guy.
He famously – and for no discernible reason – punched a hole through a ceiling tile upon hearing that Leave had won the EU referendum campaign.
He’s a blagger, a chancer – a political gangster, if you will. Though given his penchant for grandiose self-promotion he tends to err on the side of Satirical Gangster these days.
This week – on his personal blog – he put out a call for applications for a swathe of jobs going at Downing Street.
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Being the maverick he is, Cummings declared that he wanted “misfits and weirdos” to join his team. Apparently, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg don’t fill the oddball quota all on their own.
Part-job advert, part performance art, Dominic Cummings knows what he wants.
“We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole, weirdos from William Gibson novels like that girl hired by Bigend as a brand ‘diviner’ who feels sick at the sight of Tommy Hilfiger or that Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB.”
Number 10 want “unusual” economists and “unusual” analysts to join the team, he said.
It makes sense. Boris Johnson is unusual. He looks like a badly composed E-fit of a serial flasher, not a Prime Minister. He is also well-known for his fragile ego, so perhaps this wild approach to HR is just an exercise in ensuring that Johnson isn’t the weirdest man in the room for a change.
Above all, Dominic Cummings demands slavish loyalty and devotion.
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“I’ll have to spend time helping you so don’t apply unless you can commit to at least 2 years.”
Although, having spent the last few years as Boris Johnson’s right-hand man, it should come as no surprise that he appears to be a bit of a commitment-phobe.
“I’ll bin you within weeks if you don’t fit — don’t complain later because I made it clear now.”
Applicants need to free themselves from the shackles of monogamy because this is a Tory Government and they don’t have the time, nor the temperament, for that kind of thing.
“You will not have weekday date nights, you will sacrifice many weekends — frankly it will hard having a boy/girlfriend at all. It will be exhausting but interesting and if you cut it you will be involved in things at the age of ~21 that most people never see.”
What are these “things” of which he speaks? Secure employment? A chance to get on the housing ladder? We can only hope that’s what he is referring to because the alternative simply doesn’t bear thinking about.
Dominic Cummings is clear. He is looking for people who don’t fit the traditional Oxbridge educated, upper-class toff image of the Tory inner circle.
I fear his utopian (dystopian?) dream team might be scuppered by the fact that applicants will need to be the kind of political geek that spends their night reading rambling political blogs such as his.
Like me, but in fairness, I was waiting for potatoes to roast and I was very, very bored.
As I ploughed through the longest job advert I’d ever read, I wondered briefly about what drugs they are handing out in Downing Street these days. And then, of course, I applied for the job.
Dom might think he knows what he is looking for, but that’s because he hasn’t met me yet. Who better to have in charge of UK Government communication strategy than an independence-supporting, lefty feminist?
Those with closed minds might advise Dom against my appointment, for fear I’ll get up to all sorts of mischief once I’m at my desk. They might worry that I’d stray from the party line and start sending out press releases on UK Government-headed paper, lamenting the pernicious Tory agenda.
They might deduce that I’d soon find out where the Section 30 order is kept, and fax it over to Nicola Sturgeon before lunch on my first day.
But Dom is a big picture kind of man. He wants to rip up the machinery of government and remake it in his image.
Which is why I am confident that my application will be successful, providing I pass a background check, of course.
Wish me luck, dear readers.
When I’m settled at Downing Street, I’ll have to find another way of communicating with you all. Whenever Laura Kuenssberg tweets out a quote from an “anonymous Downing St source” it will be me. Take the first letter of the third word in each sentence. That will be our code. But shhh, don’t tell Dom.
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