The prospect of Cummings returning isn't just hopeless — it shows the Tories don't have anyone with radical ideas.

Dominic Cummings, one of the architects of the Vote Leave program Photo: ANDY RAIN/Shutterstock

What they say about Rishi Sunak is… that he was even considering bringing back Dominic Cummings — a man whom Foreign Secretary David Cameron has called a «career psychopath»?

The Prime Minister has reportedly offered Boris Johnson's former aide-turned-foe a «secret deal» to help the Conservatives win the next general election.

Downing Street does not deny that Sunak met Cummings twice for talks, as first reported by The Sunday Times, but rejects the idea that it was related to the job offer, saying the prime minister simply had a «wide-ranging discussion» with him «

< p>Meetings appear to have taken place in North Yorkshire, the Prime Minister's constituency, in July, and in London in December 2022, when Sunak's chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith was also present , close to Cummings.

According to Cummings: “He wanted to make a secret deal where I would hold the election and promised to take the government seriously after the election. But I'd rather the Tories lose than remain in power without prioritizing what's important and what matters to voters.

“I said I was willing to build a political machine to crush Labor and win the election only if he committed to No 10 to really prioritize the things that matter most, like the nuclear weapons infrastructure scandal, natural and man-made pandemics, scandal with the Ministry of Defense.» procurement, artificial intelligence and other technological capabilities, and broken core government institutions which we started to fix in 2020 but Boris refused.»

Labour and the Liberal Democrats responded to the revelations by saying the meetings show that the Tories have run out of ideas.

But the attempted political revival of Cummings, one of the architects of the successful Vote Leave campaign, less than a year after he was sacked by Johnson, smacks of more than just desperation.

p>It speaks to Sunak's lack of

While this is undoubtedly an indictment of an administration that appears to be devoid of anyone capable of proposing radical ideas and policies, it also speaks to Sunak's lack of political sense.

Cummings is and always has been one of Westminster's most controversial figures. Even before he arrived in Downing Street as «aide to the prime minister» in July 2019, the Oxford-educated Brexit «svengali» made no secret of his hatred of the majority of Tory MPs — a feeling that was mutual, with the exception of a few Brexiteers.

Many Conservative MPs have long had a deep distrust of Cummings due to his close ties to Michael Gove, to whom he was a special adviser when the skills secretary was education secretary from 2010 to 2014.

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Although he doesn't care Law is credited with helping Johnson win an 80-seat majority at the last general election in December 2019, with many allies warning the former prime minister that Cummings could not be trusted.

The limits of his political «genius» soon became apparent when he was caught breaking strict government lockdown rules by traveling to Barnard Castle at the height of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in May 2020.

Some still do It is believed that this incident, as well as Cummings' fanaticism about lockdown, set off a series of events that ultimately led to Johnson's demise in September 2022 after just three years in office.

When Cummings subsequently confronted his former boss, whom he nicknamed «Trolley» because of his indecision and repeatedly branded him unfit for office, allies who had warned of his possible betrayal felt vindicated.

The choice Sunak was acquitted. that he has had not one but two meetings with Cummings suggests he is at best unaware, and at worst willfully ignorant, of how unpopular the Durham-born father of one is among his Conservative colleagues.

As one Tory veteran said: “It’s incredibly strange. The Conservative Party would never agree to Cummings' return.

“One of the attacks that damaged Sunak during the election campaign was that he was a “Cummings man”, something he and his team denied at the time .

Another senior MP added: “This smacks of political naivety. There is a cult of youth in the government, a problem. The consequence of Cummings' return would be an immediate revolt of parliamentarians.»

Some are already blaming the Prime Minister's political secretary and Winchester College contemporary James Forsyth.

Forsyth, 42, who is married to Johnson's former press secretary Allegra Stratton, is close to Cummings working as The Spectator's political editor, in where Cummings' wife Mary Wakefield worked for more than 20 years.

He is also closer than the average prime minister's aide, having chosen him as best man at his wedding to Stratton in 2011. The couple are godparents to each other's children.

However, Sunak's decision to turn to a «toxic» figure like Cummings adds weight to growing fears that the Prime Minister's team is out of his element and quickly drowning: a recent poll found that Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer is the most popular leader with 390 seats in England, Wales and Scotland, while the Prime Minister is voters' first choice with just four seats. According to one MP -Conservative: “James Forsyth is a problem now. He is not a strategist and is not a risk taker.”