DOMINIC CUMMINGS, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s top adviser, is a combative and unorthodox political strategist. The director of the official Leave campaign, Cummings is hailed as an innovative disruptor who will bring his win-at-all-costs mentality to delivering Brexit — alongside an instinct for radical reform of government. If Johnson was the face of the official Brexit campaign, Vote Leave, Cummings was its brain. He is credited with creating the “Take Back Control” slogan and calculating the Brexiteers’ widely-debunked claims that the United Kingdom sends ￡350 million (US$424 million) to Brussels every week. Portrayed by actor Benedict Cumberbatch as a tortured genius in a TV drama this year about the EU referendum, the 47-year-old is not your typical political aide. Famously described by former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron as a “career psychopath,” Cummings is a divisive figure within British conservative circles who has made a host of enemies with his acidulous approach to political debate. He has been compared to Steve Bannon, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, and is similarly a keen student of military theories and tactics. Cummings’ elevation, like Bannon’s, is seen as a risky move, with some skeptical that his uncompromising and caustic style can succeed at the heart of British Government. Cummings is not the sort of person typically associated with top-level politics. Despite having spent his whole career working for conservative politicians and a conservative think tank, he claims to have never been a member of any political party and loathes large parts of the governing Conservative party he now serves. He is known by his single-minded zeal to get the job in front of him done. “What sets him apart from many people is the unbelievable strategic focus on the task at hand. Dom’s favorite phrase was always ‘don’t get stuck in the weeds,’” says Gisela Stuart, a former opposition party lawmaker who chaired the Vote Leave campaign. “Dominic Cummings is the disruptor’s disruptor — he’s strategically single-minded and ideologically iconoclastic,” said Tim Bale, politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, who featured him in his 2011 tome “The Conservative Party: from Thatcher to Cameron.” “Civil servants and party apparatchiks may well have their noses put out of joint by his adviser, but for Johnson that’s a price well worth paying if he can hang on to (power) and get us out of the EU.” Opposition noted that he was found in contempt of parliament in March for refusing to appear before a committee probing fake news during the referendum campaign. In trademark style, he dismissively accused its members of having “greater interest in grandstanding than truth-seeking.” On a personal blog where he posts everything from political musings to lengthy treatises, Cummings argued last month that Britain’s current Brexit-fuelled political dysfunction was “a once in 50 or 100-year crisis” to be exploited. “Such crises also are the waves that can be ridden to change things normally unchangeable,” Cummings wrote. Born in Durham, northern England, to a father who worked as an oil rig project manager and a mother who was a special needs teacher, Cummings attended a local private school before winning admission to elite Oxford University. A Russophile with a passion for Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Cummings reportedly headed to the country after graduation and helped set up an airline in the 1990s; however, it failed to get off the ground. After returning to Britain, he first cut his teeth in politics by spearheading several campaigns, including against Britain adopting the euro. In an early sign of his take-no-prisoners approach, Cummings was made Conservative party director of strategy in 2002 but left the role after eight months, branding then party leader Iain Duncan Smith “incompetent.” He became special adviser to Education Minister Michael Gove — later a leading Brexiteer — making a name for himself by developing an “us against them” bunker mentality within the department towards the rest of government. He is said to disdain Britain’s apolitical civil service, viewing it as a block on innovation. After a period in the political wilderness, Cummings was picked to lead the Brexit referendum campaign. The victory crowned his reputation as a political maverick who could deliver against the odds. “One of the best decisions that Matthew Elliot (chief executive of Vote Leave) made was to bring Dom in to run the strategy side of the Leave campaign. No one thought we could win the thing, but he had a plan, he stuck to it and it worked,” said Daniel Hannan, a prominent Leave campaigner, and friend of Cummings. He has stated publicly that he had to be convinced to lead Vote Leave. “I wasn’t massively keen to get involved with this,” he said in 2017, claiming that he’d had enough of the Conservative party’s infighting over Brexit. The data-driven campaign used social media nimbly and was seen as reaching voters typically ignored by Britain’s main parties — something that could soon come in useful for Johnson as the likelihood of snap elections grows. An admirer of 19th-century Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck and U.S. fighter pilot and military strategist John Boyd, Cummings appears already to be deploying the latter’s core philosophy of trying to confuse opponents by defying expectations. Notably, he is pictured in the background of photos of Johnson entering Downing Street in late July, standing out from other suited civil servants in jeans and a T-shirt. Damian McBride, a former adviser to Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said of Cummings’ early maneuvers: “It all suggests a wild and unpredictable ride ahead.” Cummings largely shuns the spotlight. He seems to revel in his reputation of being an irascible eccentric, his vast intellect perfectly matched with an instinctive understanding of how normal people think. Friends say he detests the political elites and relishes being seen as the strategic genius they all aspire to be. Since entering Downing Street, Cummings’ devotion to work and enormous energy is being instilled across British Government. Longer hours, endless reams of paperwork preparing for Brexit and canceled vacations have become normal. Yet despite this sudden increase in workload, it’s hard to find anyone currently working with Cummings who has a bad word to say about him. “If the United Kingdom leaves on 31 October... I think in his view that will be halfway through the mission; the second part will be the reorganization of government,” explained a friend of Cummings. This ambition to change the government is one side of Cummings’ master plan. The other is his belief that politics simply doesn’t adequately serve the public. He doesn’t suffer fools and has a reputation for dismissing those he doesn’t respect. He was reportedly dismissive of Cameron and Nick Clegg, the prime minister and deputy prime minister for whom he worked, respectively. David Laws, a former Liberal Democrat lawmaker, wrote in his book “Coalition” that Cummings once said to him while discussing education policy, “I don’t like Clegg, but I think Cameron and No. 10 are muppets as well. They have no idea what they are doing.” Even Cummings’ admirers predict that his busy, take-no-prisoners approach to government could ultimately be his downfall. The civil service in London has a particular habit of wearing political appointments down. In Brussels, the EU also presents a challenge. Fortunately for Cummings, the job at hand has a firm deadline of Oct. 31. After that, he might stay or find himself eased out of Downing Street so that Johnson can begin governing more traditionally. (SD-Agencies) | 