I suspect that both he and Mr Gove do indeed think of Mr Johnson as the frontman for what is ultimately their project. Whether we are talking about ministers or officials, Mr Johnson prefers to be surrounded by people who are indebted to him. To lose one of the country’s most senior civil servants might be unfortunate. The decorous version of their project was presented by Mr Gove in his recent Ditchley lecture on civil service reform. Mr Cummings is a humanities graduate whose only proven skills are as a political campaigner and the fabulator of implausible explanations for breaking lockdown rules.

Source: The Guardian July 03, 2020 10:32 UTC