Completely crackers that Boris Johnson is in power, says Cummings

It is “completely crackers” that Boris Johnson has become prime minister, Dominic Cummings has said, adding that during Covid it has been a case of “lions led by donkeys”.

Mr Cummings, whose strategy was key to Boris Johnson winning the 2019 general election, said thousands of people in the country could provide better leadership than the prime minister.

The former adviser told the Science and Technology and Health and Social Care Committees that the fact the public had to choose between Mr Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn in the election meant it was clear that the electoral system had “gone extremely, extremely badly wrong”.

He added: “There’s so many thousands and thousands of wonderful people in this country who could provide better leadership than either of those two.

“And there’s obviously something terribly wrong with the political parties if that’s the best that they can do.”

He said that “in any sensible, rational government” he would have not had the power he did.

“It is completely crazy that I should have been in such a senior position, in my personal opinion,” he said.

“I’m not smart. I’ve not built great things in the world.

“It’s just completely crackers that someone like me should have been in there, just the same as it’s crackers that Boris Johnson was in there, and that the choice at the last election was Jeremy Corbyn.

“It’s also the case that there are wonderful people inside the Civil Service, there are brilliant, brilliant officials all over the place.

“But the system tends to weed them out from senior management jobs.

“And the problem in this crisis (Covid) was very much lions led by donkeys over and over again.”