This is not the behaviour of confident men

The dominant characteristic of this government is that it is addicted to control. That is its guiding principle.

It wants to control the BBC and has done so by threatening the licence fee. It wants to control the courts by installing an Attorney General who has made it clear that she abhors judicial

activism, which really means she didn’t like the Supreme Court’s decision on prorogation. And now we learn, from yesterday’s startling re-shuffle, that Dominic Cummings, and his deputy Boris

Johnson, intend to take back control of the Treasury.

Sajid Javid will have won a good many admirers for refusing the appalling deal he was offered yesterday by No.10 — either sack all your people and replace them with our yes-men and

yes-women, or get lost. Javid, to his credit decided to walk.

In his place came Rishi Sunak, a callow 39-year-old who has risen to prominence through a strict policy of obedience to the Prime Minister and a hard-line commitment to Brexit.

The intention is to bring the Treasury to heel. This has been one of Cummings’s long-held ambitions, and now he finally has the chance to do it. No.10 and the Treasury will now operate as a

single team. Gone are the days when the Prime Minister had to subject his plans to economic and fiscal tests. From now on, everything will be waved through.

Because this is what the Johnson government is all about — or at least, what it has been about so far: getting everything and everyone in the political equivalent of a head-lock. Getting rid

of all the heavyweight contrarians — that was first. The Tory moderates, most of them talented, experienced and not cowed by Cummings or Johnson, were all shipped out in the last

parliament, slung from the party in a brutal purge. The ones that didn’t immediately announce they were standing down were defeated at the general election.

Remarkably, the ensuing electoral victory did nothing to calm No.10’s control freakery. If anything, it made it worse — Cummings, it seems, is a sore winner. And so there was the ban on

ministers appearing on the Today programme, and the decision to review the criminal sanction for those who don’t pay the BBC licence fee. These two things were both triggered by the idea

that the Beeb was too anti-Brexit and that it is institutionally left wing.

It may well be that the BBC is a bit left-wing and anti-Brexit — but even if that’s true, it didn’t make any difference, did it? The country voted for Brexit and the Tories, so why the hot

pursuit? And neither did the alleged judicial activism make any difference to Brexit — we still left.

A difficult time lies ahead for Johnson and Cummings. They have shown themselves adept at grabbing for power. They have also shown that they are sufficiently bad-spirited and insecure that

they need not only to win, but to rub out any semblance of opposition. This is not the behaviour of confident men.

Because really, Johnson and Cummings have so far achieved nothing. No trade deals, no progress in discussion with the EU, no significant re-orientation of policy in favour of the north —

nothing. Instead, we have the political theatre of HS2 and a hatchet-job of a re-shuffle.

But this year is going to be one of the most important in modern British history and it will involve Johnson negotiating with entities over which he can exert no power and with people over

whom he will have no control. In his negotiations with the countries that will soon, it is hoped, be buying the £291 billion of UK exports that used to travel frictionlessly into the EU,

Johnson and Cummings will require subtlety and guile. When they come to negotiate with the EU over the passporting rights of British financial services companies, they will need to be

similarly tactful, as they will need to be in a whole host of other external negotiations.

But like Corbyn before them, Johnson and Cummings have turned inward. Faced with the enormity of the task before them, they have set about controlling the things that can be controlled, and

that means the party. Just as Corbyn grabbed the levers of control in the Labour machine, so No.10 has seized control of the Conservative Party — and now the government machine. They may

feel pleased with their moment of political dominance. But it will soon pass. And when it does, they will learn that control is not the same thing as good government. Quite the opposite, in

fact.

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