Bold Seagull
strong and stable with me, or...
Mandelson was an elected member of parliament representing constituents.
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[Politics] Sajid Javid resigns as Chancellor of the Exchequer
- Thread starter West Hoathly Seagull
- Start date
Mandelson was an elected member of parliament representing constituents.
Is it PotG?
Thrifty non-licker
More that Burnley supporter bloke I should venture.
ManOfSussex
We wunt be druv
Shortest reign of a post war Chancellor of the Exchequer and first never to deliver a budget since Iain Macleod in 1970, who died shortly after taking office.
Bold Seagull
strong and stable with me, or...
Given that Boris is a bumbling muppet of a man, and then you've got the likes of Raab, Patel, Barclay etc. perhaps Cummings is the only one in there stopping a total unabated **** up on the nation. Perhaps history will reflect, 'thank god Cummings was in there....'
or maybe not.
You’re right he was.
Soylent Blue
Banned
- Mar 13, 2019
- 195
I was wondering this, or an Alistare Cambell. Most Leaders have svengalis lurking about but this one seems to have taken the leap to "secret ruler of the world" level of conspiracy.
Pavilionaire
Well-known member
- Jul 7, 2003
- 30,665
Just 4 weeks until the Budget, the world is waiting to hear what a post-Brexit Britain will look like and the Chancellor's been constructively dismissed.
Utter, UTTER shambles.
Utter, UTTER shambles.
ManOfSussex
We wunt be druv
Is it PotG?
Thrifty non-licker
Guess what, there WILL be a Budget on 11 March, the world will keep spinning and folks will moan about pie prices at The Amex.
It all just moves on.
KZNSeagull
Well-known member
The new Chancellor was writing the budget anyway, so not that much of a shambles really.
Kalimantan Gull
Well-known member
I think its very hard to know who the real Cummings is. He is portrayed as a narcissist, a bully, there's everything you say. He is linked so heavily to Brexit we see him as a right-wing free-market small-government type. I don't think that's true.
He has been in politics a long time. He campaigned against the euro when Blair was PM, and against the NE assembly. Won both of those. He worked closely with IDS when he was leader and with Gove in the education department, and both of those went to shit. So he's no magic wand. I think he found it impossible to beat the establishment from the inside. Then back to campaigning with Vote Leave, resoundingly successful. Now in the PM's office, maybe he can beat the establishment by changing it from the top.
I read a few interviews with him and articles about him, there are lots of contradictions. But he does come across as someone who wants to 'do politics better'. And I admire that. Some excerpts:
from the New Statesman - if this is who he really is, then I have to be interested in the person espousing this philosophy
"In 2014, I saw Cummings speak about his time in government. His speech sprinted through a series of loosely connected ideas from neuroscience, complexity theory and geopolitics, like an Adam Curtis documentary played at triple speed. He talked of a political system that “selects for narcissists”.
“Look around parliament. Who are the kind of people that get ahead? People who are glib, who enjoy public speaking, who make jokes.” Government, he said, is overly dominated by arts graduates who have no experience of managing large organisations. It needs fewer people who care about climbing the greasy pole, and more who “just want to get things done”. It’s hard to see how the answer to this problem is Boris Johnson. But then, I suspect Cummings has long seen Johnson as a useful vehicle awaiting a driver.
Cummings isn’t a right-wing radical – he rails against private sector bonuses and despises Nigel Farage. Rather than being anti-government, he wants a different kind of government: faster, fitter, future-focused. He is now at the centre of power for the first time, courtesy of a man who embodies everything he despises about politics. If he is at peace with that it’s probably because he sees an opportunity to set fire to the system that overpromotes people like Johnson. In 2014, he noted that Britain’s centralised power structure means that “if a group of people take over a party… you could actually change an awful lot, very quickly”.
Then there is this from an article in Foreignpolicy.com - in my committed Remainer's mind probably the best argument for Brexit, and it came from Dominic Cummings:
This raises the larger question of why Cummings wanted Brexit in the first place? The answer is even more interesting than the tactics he used to bring it about. At the Nudgestock conference in Folkestone, England, a year after the referendum, an audience member asked Cummings whether he felt guilty for what he had done. “For me … the worst-case scenario for Europe is a return to 1930s-style protectionism and extremism. And to me the EU project, the Eurozone project, are driving the growth of extremism,” Cummings replied. “The single most important reason, really, for why I wanted to get out of the EU is I think that it will drain the poison of a lot of political debates … UKIP and Nigel Farage would be finished,” he said. “Once there’s democratic control of immigration policy, immigration will go back to being a second- or third-order issue.”
"The single most important reason... to get out of the EU is that it will drain the poison of a lot of political debates … UKIP and Nigel Farage would be finished - immigration will go back to being a second- or third-order issue" - Thats quite a powerful thought
and again, that article goes on to talk about Cumming's vision, which I find aligns with mine in many ways..
Cummings is more of an entrepreneur than a politician. Some of his greatest idols are Otto von Bismarck, Richard Feynman, and Sun Tzu. He disdains red tape, empty prestige, and overpaid charlatans; he loves technology, evolutionary psychology, and the science of super-forecasting. His greatest interest of all is how to produce high-performance institutions, capable of both making difficult decisions and course-correcting during crises. And he believes that the EU’s inability to do either of these things has lent oxygen to populist opportunists and put the future of international cooperation at risk.
.In laying out his own vision for a post-Brexit Britain, Cummings barely mentions national identity. His concerns are structural, not cultural—he is preoccupied with free trade, not ethnic replacement. He wants to increase skilled immigration and turn the U.K. into a magnet for young scientists from across the world, using the comparative advantages of the country’s National Health Service to take a lead in the controversial field of genomic medicine (the technology that allows doctors to detect disease risk and cognitive problems in embryos). He even proposes providing open borders to math and computer science Ph.D.s — not out of generosity, but out of an absolutist belief in scientific talent—an idea that Johnson has already taken up. Indeed, Cummings uses the word “talent” repeatedly in his writings. The Chinese Communist Party attracts talent, he contends; the EU and U.K. do not.
If liberal democratic values are to survive, the institutions that defend them require an overhaul. They must be streamlined, democratized, and updated at the same rate as the technology sector. Otherwise, the decisive policymaking of China’s authoritarian model—better suited to tackling climate change and other long-term challenges—could make it a serious rival to the West’s staid, stagnant bureaucracies.
So - I can't see him succeeding. But for me, a liberal voting, remain-fanatic, I see a lot to interest me in Cummings. And getting rid of Javid because he wanted to keep his own fiefdom in his office rather than coordinate with the leader's office, well it fits the profile.
Mr Putdown
Well-known member
Only up until 2004, he certainly wasn’t an elected MP when he was in Brown’s cabinet.
Bold Seagull
strong and stable with me, or...
No, but he only went into Brown's cabinet after he became a member of the house of Lords.
May be a bit less about alleged anti-semitism in the Labour party now that we have an anti-semitic AG
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
His Indian millionaire in laws, and those who went to Eton with him?
An ideal candidate for the nation’s finances. He will have a great understanding of the population’s daily struggles and cost of living.
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
Civil Servants have to abide by a code of practice including signing the Official Secrets Act. Cummings, is just someone who has Johnson’s ear, with no such constraints.
TheJasperCo
Well-known member
You could have written a similar thing for Tony Blair and his government's desire to take us into two conflicts.
vegster
Sanity Clause
- May 5, 2008
- 27,922
I think that Javid was always trying too hard to please the more rabid inner cartel that is trying to control Johnson, he genuinely looked uncomfortable with bare faced lying unlike the Gove, Raab and Hancock. Even Morgan managed to fairly successfully swallow any pride and feelings of guilt when she spouted out in support of Johnson, however, good for Javid to stand up for his principles and do the honourable thing.
It's pretty obvious that Cummings wanted his own team in No11 effectively running the Treasury and that the Chancellor himself would just be a token puppet, so, there is some honour left in politics, but probably none left in the Cabinet now.
It's pretty obvious that Cummings wanted his own team in No11 effectively running the Treasury and that the Chancellor himself would just be a token puppet, so, there is some honour left in politics, but probably none left in the Cabinet now.
He looks like one of those pictures where they take the eyes, mouth and hair from different people and you have to work out who.