You would think that someone who was portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2019 drama Brexit: The Uncivil War would be better known in America's elite political circles.
But even the best connected and most cosmopolitan know little of Dominic Cummings.
Cummings has been highly vocal over what he believes is a London-centric political system that failed to accept the United Kingdom’s voting to leave the European Union.
Following last month's UK General Election, which returned an 80-seat Conservative majority, he stated:
"After the shock of the referendum, MPs and journalists should have taken a breath and had a lot of self-reflection [on] why they misunderstood what was going on in the country. Instead, a lot of people just doubled down on their own ideas and fucked it up even more. That’s why something like this happens against expectations."
With this mandate from the voters, Cummings is now focused on modernizing the institutions and people of government.
Dominic Cummings recently recommended that UK advisers read High Output Management by Andrew Grove so that “highly productive” teams can deliver “peak performance.”
In what The Times called “the most unusual job advertisement in government history,” Boris Johnson’s chief adviser used his personal blog to invite “data scientists, project managers, policy experts, and assorted weirdos” to apply for government jobs and work with him to transform the UK government.
Cummings has been mulling for years how to improve policy delivery in Whitehall, setting out his thoughts in long blogs, combining scathing assessments of parts of the civil service with an eclectic search for “best practice.”
Well read and well educated, Cummings is reportedly an admirer of Otto von Bismarck, Richard Feynman, Sun Tzu, and US fighter pilot and military strategist John Boyd.
Cummings’s desire for wild cards to join him as he works to bring his nation’s government into the 21st century will be closely watched in New York and Washington.
-Marc
