Dominic Cummings, thank you for um agreeing to talk to me. It's been quite a long time of me harassing you over text. Yeah, about that. It's all right. It's good to get to this get to this place. Um I think the first thing really that I want to ask you is just a kind of broad question on your reflections over British politics in last year. What did you make of the general election result and how do you think this government is doing? Goodness. Well, um I guess the kind of big picture of it is we won. Why did we win the referendum? Why do we win in 2019? We won because already in 2016 the country was completely fed up with the direction we were going in and wanted big change. Westminster then sat around for three years in sort of freeall unable to go anywhere apart from generating constitutional crisis. Why do we win in 2019? Because we said the way that Tories had governed things for 10 years was a mistake. We're going to go a different direction. Need a big change. 2020 we started to do big changes across every every aspect. Economy, public services, blah blah blah blah. Defense, security, deep state, whiteall, you name it. And then of course I fall out with Boris. And then Boris basically then spends 21 22 just telling everyone let's go back to normal and not really change anything. He implodes. Sunnak doubles down on that. Sits there while the NHS collapses. They put out taxes. So if you think about what we said in 2019, the way in which we said we were going to govern, the Tories then after we left number 10, we as in the V leaf team left number 10, they just carried on in the same broken direction with institutions crumbling around them, put up taxes instead of honoring our promise in the 2019 election. And then you have the biggest um biggest spike in uh uncontrolled immigration and and and collapse of border control in British history under Boris and Sunnak. Sunnak then doubles down on I'm going to stop the boats the completely ludicrous Rwanda farce which ended um in the inevitable way with him prioritizing actually sticking to the human rights act. Curry is completely sick. Kama says we've got to have change. But then what happens when he comes in? He hasn't got an actual plan. He collides with the same rotten white wall bureaucracy. Has no priorities. And so what are the big things that he does? He stands up and he just starts ticking off the Treasury officials, the public spending team in the Treasury. Um they've got priorities like scrap winter fuel payments. So Starman and Reef stand up and start ticking off a bunch of officials priorities because the political parties are so completely brain dead. Uh predictable results, total political disaster. Um so you've got again you've got Star's very similar to Listras, similar to Sunnak, um similar to Boris after we left. They're not functionally in charge of the government. They're not even functionally in charge of number 10. They're just presiding over a system where it's essentially run by Treasury and Cabinet Office officials. Country's completely enraged. Um uh but it's just extremely similar dynamics to to the last 15 years. Um, can I ask you because I've heard you talk about this a lot and anyone else who's, you know, read your Substack or listened to you do podcasts will have heard it as well, but other people may never have heard you describe what you think the power dynamic is within government, which is basically that most of what you see in terms of cabinet, prime minister speeches, people making decisions is a facade and the real power lies somewhere else. Can you can you explain that because you've actually seen it up? you're one of a handful of people who've actually seen the system work up close. That's a scary prospect. Can you just explain that a little bit? So I think an interesting way to compare it is um is is historically right. So if you go back and look at how British government worked around 1790 1800 when when white was battling Napoleon you actually had a brilliant young prime minister William Pit with incredible focus on talent incredible focus on how the state buys things. Procurement taken incredibly seriously. science and technology research and development taken incredibly seriously and real responsibility and real meetings. William Pit would call in the actual expert from Plymouth Docklands or something and get them in and they'd have an actual discussion and then he'd make an actual decision. Now, every aspect of how that of how the system works is the opposite of that. Everything is fake. Fake meritocracy where almost all the best people are excluded from the system. completely fake responsibility. Look at who they put in as cabinet secretary. A guy uh involved with the cover up over the blood scandal. The guy responsible for the total show over pandemic preparation and COVID. And that's the guy they made cabinet secretary the most important official in in the country. Right. Sending a very clear signal to everybody that this is business as usual. No one senior will ever pay the price for monumental failure. And you have fake meetings and fake fake ministers. So the meetings in number 10 are completely scripted. The way that everything works is there's civil servants write literally a script for everyone in advance. A literal script. A literal script for like a c a cabinet meeting for example. Cabinet meeting all meetings with ministers are literally scripted including covert meetings. What happens is the officials write a script and they write introductions that they and they write the prime minister script. Prime Minister reads out the instructions and then everyone reads out their prepared scripted remarks and then at the end of that the prime minister sums up by reading out what's called chairman's notes which are the scripted conclusions before the meeting happens. Okay. So the conclusions of the meeting are written before the meeting happens. Obviously no one in any functional organization that actually works properly would ever have meetings like this. That's how the British state that that's how the British state is governed. So the real battle therefore if that's the state of play obviously is who actually drafts the chairman's notes right certainly not the secretary of state. So another way of thinking about where real power is is people often ask what did the foreign secretary think about the Brexit negotiations or what did such and such minister think about the spending review in 2019 or 2020 and the answer is can't really remember and it wasn't very important. What was important was what did the unknown 32-year-old private secretary responsible for coordinating between the foreign office and MI6 what did they think in the number 10 prime minister's office because that person actually had real power and I actually had to care what that official thought okay so that's how the system system works now now the officials weirdly everyone is sort of happy with this right but why I mean that's I mean Look, and I I've heard you say this before and I can, you know, I I get it that that's kind of your observation of it. When you go into Westminster, and I've like covered it as a reporter. I guess my question is like, do people really know? Do the people who seem who appear to have power to the public, do they really know that they're not powerful figures? Because they seem to be working hard. They have these staff. They're rushing around Westminster. They seem exhausted. um they appear to be making decisions. We're reporting on decisions that they made. Are are they do they sit in the meetings and think well I'm a fake minister or is it all a bit yes minister? Is it a bit like they they kind of think they're powerful? They know they're not as powerful as they're perceived to be. Yeah, they they sort of know but they're happy with the portrayal and the officials are extremely happy with the portrayal. Right. So the ministers you keep the the the the TV show continues. So the TV show is the ministers walk up the streets and you guys photo them and they smile knowingly as if we're going into the meeting where the important decisions are taken. So they're treated by you, the media, as if they're actually in charge. And that's fine by them because most of these characters aren't actually interested in the job. They're not interested in the real thing anyway. They're just interested in being on today program or going on your TV show. So they're happy being on the TV show. That's all they care about. And then and the officials are happy because they're actually in charge. The actual meeting that decides what happens is the meeting with all only officials in or sometimes with spades like me in number 10. But most of the meetings that happen that are actually important have really no input from ministers and that's particularly true in the whole defense security intelligence etc. world which has evolved in a very particular way now. So the national security the national security secretariat in the cabinet office has acquired huge amounts of power over how this system works. It's an empire within an empire and that has effectively zero political oversight now. There's no ministerial oversight. There's no spad oversight. Nobody political is allowed into any of the meetings that run in this 200 plus bit of the system. So I mean another way of thinking about it is is real power. The cabinet secretary has about 100 times more real power than any minister does. Barring the prime minister, the cabinet secretary can move people. Very importantly, when a bomb goes off, the first person that's told is not the prime minister. The first person that's told is the cabinet secretary. The cabinet secretary then talks to various officials and decides how much of what's happening should be told to the ministers. But the old world that you read about in the history books, the world of people like Palmer where they're actually responsible to parliament, that world has is long gone. And the responsibil and that's why and the public can sense it, right? The public understand this in a lot of ways better than the MPs and the media do. The the public the voters realize that something's gone profoundly wrong. the voters realize that what they're watching is a fake TV show. Okay. And that's why this kind of record level of distrust and disengagement, right? Correct. In in your view? Well, not my view. It's just objective truth, right? I mean, you can anyone who does market research uh um will tell you that what I'm saying about the it's it's distrust is not even the right way of putting it anymore. When I first started working on this sort of thing 20 odd years ago, you could say distrust and dissolution and blah blah. Now it's hate contempt disgust and um to the extent that the newest development I would say in this is it's now so a new way of thinking about the gulf between perceptions in outside London and perceptions inside Westminster is it's now very common to have discussions outside London with normal people where they talk about coming civil war about how their area is going to crack up what they can see around them and how fight they are for the future. That's not an abnormal conversation to have now. But that's not seeped through to Westminster. Westminster is always the last place to see these kind of dynamics. Has been for 25 years while watching. In what way? What do you mean? People are very between who and who? People are very worried in large parts of the country about the crackup in order. The visible breakdown in order. So, crime, broken communities, police vanishing from the streets, no go areas. It's all all of the obviously as well like you have creaking or broken infrastructure in lots of these places where um the police station is closed down, can't get an appointment with the GP, need emergency treatment from the NHS, can't get it. So there's a kind of general feeling of all around my local community, each of the critical bits of thing that I rely on in my life, all of these things are breaking. Meanwhile, I haven't had a pay rise in often 15 years. Yeah. A real terms pay rise in 15 years. So the these things are getting uh uh these dynamics are getting are getting worse and worse, and Westminster is always the last place to to to realize it. Um and in my opinion this this gap is getting more and more dangerous and it's also obviously why you can see um people turning to Farage. Yeah. And I want to get on to that a little bit later. Um but just that was an answer to my first question. So I do need to given that kind of absolute picture of dystopian nightmare that you just painted and the complete uselessness of Westminster. I do also want to ask you I I think I already know what you think about Sarma and this government given what you've just said, but do is there any do you see any of the things that they're doing? I assume you think they'll just b like butt up against the system and they're part of it anyway and none of it will work. But do you see any similarities in the things that they want to do compared to what you wanted to do when you were in government? Because they are talking about planning reforms. They are trying to get rid of Quangos. Um the civil service reform they've come to. the immigration stuff. They clearly realize that that's a problem whether they have the solutions to it or not. Are you pleased at least about that or Yeah, I mean I think it's it it's very damning of the Tories, right, that it's taken it takes Mweeni to be the person that says, "Oh yeah, actually a lot of things the things that vote Lee were talking about years ago are the things that we have to prioritize." So as you say, they're trying to they're talking about planning. um they're talking about changing the civil service model. But but but but the heart of it is I think Mweeni does understand a lot of these things and Mweeni is now having a lot of exactly the same sort of meetings that I did, right? Which are completely insane and he comes out of them clutching his head saying this place is absolute mad house. Do you know that? Are you assuming that that's that's what's going on? I mean, I haven't talked to him, but I talked to a lot of people around number 10 in the cabinet office who who deal with those people all the time, and it's it's the same nightmare that it's been for for for many, many years now. So, he so him and some of the other people around are dealing with very similar problems to what I dealt with. But they've also got another fundamental problem that I had, which is they've got a completely comic cabinet and they've got a dead player dud as a prime minister, a person who has no actual plan. Um, and who just very visibly there's a brilliant quote in one of the things where he said um where his his defense about the whole Sue Gray debacle was, "Well, I thought there was a plan, but it turned out she didn't have one." like he's trying to blame Sue Gray. But of course, what that actually reveals is, dude, you never read your own supposed plan. Like, if you'd asked to see the plan that you thought existed, you'd know that there was no plan, right? But you didn't bother asking. What does that tell you about the about the PN? That tells you exactly like everything you need to know, right? Apart from the fact that he also has no favorite novel, doesn't dream, etc., etc., etc., right? There's like he's dead behind the eyes in lots of lots of important ways. Politically, he has no actual he has no actual plan. Now, Mweeni has a plan, but Mweeni can only get things done. It I think people greatly exaggerate Mweeni's influence like in most ways they exaggerated my influence that you only can you only have influence in those jobs to the extent that people think that you are either doing what the PM wants or you have the psychological power to get the PM to do what you want. They're two different things obviously but they amount to the same thing. And if officials think that then officials will do what you say. But if officials think either a the PM doesn't want that or b the PM hasn't got a tweet what he wants but you won't be able to persuade him of that then you can't you can't really do very much and officials are often completely useless at their actual job but they tend to be in those positions around number 10 extremely good at sniffing out power dynamics and where how relationships function and they very very quickly figure out where where ministers are and who they really listen to and who actually has real influence in around the building. So So Mweeni is dealing with a lot of the same problems that we had. So he was the equivalent to you when you were in number 10 with Boris. So Morgan Mweeni Karma's chief of staff. You've you've sort of got close to saying something complimentary about him already in this podcast. What do you actually think of him? So I don't know him. I've never met him. Uh I don't actually know very much about him, but I think that um like a core thing that I've been saying about Westminster for 20 odd years is that in some sense like the the the fundamental problem is that the system is be has become increasingly divorced from reality and it operates in a kind of um as a kind of denial of service attack on itself. Mweeny, whatever else you might think of him, is at least an entity that is trying to force both politicians and officials to face some realities about what voters actually want. Not what the media wants, not what the other MPs want, not what the officials want, not what the lawyers want, but what the voters want. And in a system where almost no one really thinks about the voters, I think it's inherently good if there's someone senior in number 10 reminding people, yeah, but millions of people don't actually agree with anything we're saying in this room and the reason why we won is XY Z. So maybe we should reflect on why on why we actually won the election. No, Mween is in there saying we won the election because we said that after 14 years of the nightmare Tory time we're going to deliver what Boris promised to deliver in 2019 but didn't real fundamental radical change of direction in how this country's governed. That's why we won because people wanted that. The reason why we're sinking in the polls now is because people don't think we're delivering it and we have to face this core fact, right? That's what between is telling people. But of course, as Charlie Manger always says, you know, bringing reality to to to to most people is not um uh is not very popular. And uh therefore, of course, that's why there's growing more and more calls from all the sophisticated pundits who say, "Well, the obvious thing to do is to sack Minweeni and put up taxes." Genius. the people who people who are always wrong uh think that the answer to the government's problems is just don't discuss immigration. Put up taxes even though you promised that you wouldn't do um and fire the person who won the election. Yeah. Let's talk about immigration because I think you think that you see the same mistakes being made over and over again. So this week Starmer has basically he's speedrunning the whole Sunnac disaster. What's he done at the heart of it? Number one, he said this is a massive massive problem causing quote irredeemable damage unquote. Secondly, he's invested his own personal responsibility in saying unlike all the other useless tosses, I am actually going to get a grip of this and solve it. And then number three, when he's asked in the press conference, so does that mean you're going to change the human rights act in the ECHR? He said no. So it's exa he's done literally exactly the same as what Sunnak has done. He's massively raised the salience of an issue that he cannot by definition solve. Now I went into all this. I had exactly the same conversation with Sunnak secretly twice when Sunnak became prime minister and I said to said to Rishi, "We all went into this in excruciating detail in 2020. We got to the bottom of it. We went through it with the Navy and special forces on the operational side and we went through it with the best lawyers inside government and the best lawyers outside government and the conclusion is extremely simple. Stopping the boats is obviously trivally easy in operational terms. It could the boats could be stopped in days. But the fundamental legal problem is that it can't be done. The prime minister cannot give the orders to the navy in a way that the courts will allow because of the human rights act. The courts will stop it and say no these the these orders from the PM are unlawful. Everyone agreed that in 2020. That's why I said at the time, right, very simple. For this and a thousand other reasons, we have to prioritize leaving the Human Rights Act and getting out the ECR. Can I just go back? What would the orders be? So, the prime minister would say to the Navy, what? Turn them back. Essentially, if you if so, if if your if your number one priority is stopping the boats, then what you say is no boats will cross. No people will land. Anybody that we pull off boats will get put on an island somewhere. No one is setting foot in mainland Britain and no boats are landing here at all. So you lift the people off the boats. They don't come they don't come onto the British mainland and you destroy the boats. You then say and you announce publicly special forces are looking for the people who are organizing these gangs and the boats. No more landing, but we're looking for the people who send them. What happens? Very absolutely immediately and and you drop them. What? people organizing the boats say this has turned from an extremely simp extremely lucrative business into a complete disaster and I've now got to worry about special forces hunting me down in North Africa. this. Let's send the boats. Let's send the people somewhere else. So operationally how you stop the boat is simple. Also I would say it's moral because at the moment you have children dying every month drowning through this whole nightmare, right? So if you actually made this case to the public, the public would be completely supportive. But you can't do it because of the Human Rights Act. Now Starmer has got himself into exactly the same position as Starmer. He's told everyone that this is a nightmare. He's told everyone it's a super serious problem that that that's that's causing quote irredeemable damage, but he won't change the Human Rights Act and the ECR structure. So he can't actually get to grips with the core problems of how judicial review and the courts now operate. And so he is setting himself up for exactly the same political disaster that wishes Sunnak had. And it's going to play out live on social media in a way that the number 10 can't control because everyone will see the stupid dingies arriving every day all through the summer after Star said this is irredeemable damage and it must stop and I'm going to stop it and everyone's going to see the boats arriving every day. So people know people have known this inside number 10 the Cabinet Office for years. Sulac was told this in 2020 in 2023 and everyone knows this. It's the exact same thing with Storm. Now it can't end any other way than as it did for Sunnak which is which is political disaster. But I think the deeper thing here is what does it say about what the politicians are fundamentally optimizing for? They're fundamentally optimizing for keeping Whiteall and the civil servants and the human rights lawyers happy. They are not optimizing for what the voters want. And and even more interestingly, right, they'll keep doing that even though it's completely self-destructive in a personal way for their career. And it's politically destructive of the electoral coalition which they built. Yeah. And it's even more mental for Star to do it than for Sunnak because Star watched Sunnak do exactly this and exploited it himself and he's doing literally the same thing. on reform. Uh I've heard you talk about this many times before. In fact, the last time I spoke to you, you said that you and Boris and that government was the one thing standing in the way of Nigel Farage doing much better in British politics. And in your mind, that was a good thing because the last thing you wanted to see was Nigel Farage kind of taking over British politics. But has your opinion changed? And are you surprised at how well they're doing? So I think I mean just an obvious statement of fact right that that that um once we took over number 10 2019 and then set out a certain agenda for what we were going to do then Brexit party polling fell uh because people thought right okay well like they're actually going to do these things. Um and if we'd stuck to the plan 2020 20 to 2024 and done what we said and what we started in 2020 um then obviously the whole history of the last the last few years would be different and the election would be different star would have gone uh and far would still be retired but it's a great irony of the of the kind of the mainstream that they got what they wanted in in in most important ways right they didn't get a vote leave government in the end they got a normal Tory government um and now they've got Labor But the actual consequence of that is that they've recreated their worst nightmare which is Nigel Farage. And they've done it because the voters simply don't want the cont the voters don't want the continuation that the Westminster system wants. Westminster by revealed preference, the officials and the MPs have wanted just to keep going with higher tax, more regulation, hate entrepreneurs, hate science and technology, won't take procurement seriously, implosion of public services, total shambles in defense, etc., etc. The MPs and officials and lawyers have basically been happy with that and their answer to everything is just more more taxes, more power, more regulation. and be both old parties went along with it. Country wants something different and in the end people are going to say well you know if it takes if it takes vote for far to show what we think then we'll vote for Far. So the pathologies of the old system have created exactly the back backlash which they're most frightened of. But you are you surprised at it because you've said before that there's a cap. No, I mean sorts of I've heard you say it caps out at about 15% before for Raja's popularity and now it doesn't anymore. Doesn't doesn't anymore. Correct. I think um so I think uh a couple of things since I since I said that and the whole system has gone through two big changes, right? One, the Boris Trust see like a total meltdown of the Tory party such that it's more loathed and despised than ever. And then secondly, people saw Star come in. They saw the whole old system go, "Oh, finally a grown-up. Oh, Sue Gray, the Jedi ninja is knows what she's doing. Brilliant. Brilliant." And then that whole group just completely imploded on contact with the reality of Modern Whiteall. So people are now starting to realize, "Oh, right. Well, it's not even inside the Labor Party as well, right? I'm sure you know better than me talking to Labour MPs. Labor MPs bought the establishment story that the only thing wrong with the government was Brexit and Boris and these nightmare psychopaths and vote leave and once these people are all cleared out the way and you have grown-ups like Kman in charge, everything will be fine. Now, the Labour MPs are going, "Oh that turns out not to be the case. Turns out that Whiteall doesn't work." And of course the Labor ministers are now coming out of meetings in place like the MOD going these meetings are completely batch crazy. They say there's only three options and all three of the options are completely insane. Like what what's going on this place? So you've had that whole phenomenon, right? Both parties have completely destroyed their core reputation and in that environment there's only one person who's still saying the same things he said for 20 years. combined with the system hates me, I hate the system, you hate the system, we're on the same side. If you want to put two fingers up at the system, then vote for me. So reform have gone up in a sense and it's not exact, it's not exactly correlated with what people think about Nigel himself. This reform is a vehicle for people to say, "We despise you, Westminster. We hate both the old parties. We hate White Hall. We hate the old media. We hate the whole lot of you." And that and and the and Farage going up in the polls is the expression of that core feeling, which if anybody goes does focus groups around the country will tell you that is a ubiquitous sentiment. So, Farage is just channeling that. Of course, it's going to go up in the polls. So, it sounds like you're quite aligned with that. with reform and kind of what they stand for. I mean that seems like to the extent that you've got to to the extent that if the choices are the Boris Sunnak truss option or the Kiestarma option then yeah obviously I prefer I mean I prefer almost anything to those two things because because that path is taking the country it's taking the country into profound crisis right it's taken us into the longest period in 200 years of stagnant real wages for normal people it's taken us into disintegration public services take us into the show with police security, Islamic terrorism, all the other things that are the all the other nightmare problems we've got. So at at the heart of this whole thing is Westminster is dominated by people who fundamentally think just tweak the old thing but keep going the same direction and there's not really any alternative. And there is a set of people like me and voters who think that old thing is completely broken and we completely hate it and we're completely sick of it and we want to go in a different direction. Now the old system can keep struggling and fighting but it's not going to win that battle in the end. It's only a question of how destructive the transition is. I guess my question is, you know, if you thought about coming in, you still have so many ideas about politics. You still are thinking about it, talking about it, you know, especially with what's going on in the US. Is reform a possible re-entry vehicle for you? Not for me. No. I mean, you don't want to work with Farage because I know you've talked to him. I don't want to work in Westminster. Okay. It's just not I I hate it. I've always hated it. But I was going to say you've always hated it, but you have worked there before. You know, you have come in. I mean, you hated it back when you were working for GO. You were calling everyone the blob and when you were working for Boris, you hated all the Tory MPs on the system and everything. So, I just I guess I wonder, you know, if there might be a possible moment for you to come back. I mean, there there are various ways in which I could help a future government, but I'm not um but uh it's a political thing. I don't want to be involved with the next election. I don't want to be involved with reforming the Tories. you know, it's not what um that's just not how I want to spend my time. But if you if there was a kind of, you know, insurgent reform government on the horizon, would you be willing to help them campaign? I think it's far too soon to start. I think that I think that the whole system is going to go through multiple transitions before we ever get there. And it's we can't know now what 2029 is going to look like. I think Kem is going to go probably this year. there's already people maneuver like organizing to to get rid of her and I think that that will work. If it doesn't work this year, it'll definitely happen after next May. So, she's a goner. So, there's going to be a big transition there. And then there's a big fundamental question about far and reform right at the heart of it, which I think Nigel himself knows. Reform has been a oneman band. It's been Nigel and EO. They can win 50, 100, 150 seats with reformers Nigel and iPhone, but they can't win an overall general election and have a plan for government and have a serious team able to take over Downing Street and govern and control Whiteall with one man and an iPhone. So the fundamental question for reform is do they try to and if they try to can they actually execute on turning the thing from a oneman band and iPhone to something which can attract um can attract elite talent can get can Nigel if you think about it on certain kinds of tests right can farage stand up in 2028 on a platform and say look at the 10 people on this stage with me. This is going to be my shadow chancellor. This is going to be my first secretary. Man for man, woman for woman. These 10 people are obviously better both than the current farce in the cabinet and the current far in the Tory party. Look at me. Look at these people. If you imagine that they go through a transition and they could do that, then British politics is going to be in a completely different state. Yeah. And what about a pact with the tries? Maybe would that work, do you think? All depends how the cards fall. I mean, um, Chem can't do it obviously, but she'll be gone. Um, but also, it's quite possible that the Tories have just kind of crossed the event horizon and actually are not aren't salvageable. Like, everyone sort of assumes that because they've always been around, then like somehow there must be at least one last chance for them to turn things around. But it's possible that that chance is actually in their in their past. Do you think it doesn't exist? It might be dead. Might be dead. Yeah. I mean, certainly they're on the way to that. Right. On the current numbers from last week, there are no Tory safe seats. The tries are all completely obliterated. If Kimmy stays till next May, there's going to be almost no counselors left. There's going to be 100 people rallying around in Westminster with functionally dead party. I mean, it's already intellectually dead. It's already financially bankrupt. It's already organizationally completely gone. But they've still got X,000 counselors running parts of local government. That's all going to get Thanos out of existence next spring if she stays there. So at that point, there's not really much of anything left. I don't think you have a very high opinion of Kem Benedok. Um what do you think? Extremely low opinion. What do you think of Robert Genrich? So I'm more close to the toy piece now. I've talked to almost more than ever, but he does at least seem to be um uh he's in the right he's sort of in the right place on crime on the nightmare of the whole grooming gang thing in saying that the tourist totally failed in not having a proper investigation into what the hell was going on and that should happen now. So I think he's doing some of the right things for sure, but I'm not really I have I mean I've been sort of looking at other things in the last over last year and and not on top of whatever's been up to. Okay. So let's let's move on then to to to US politics because I think there are a lot of comparisons to draw. It's obviously we're watching it from here kind of open mouth. Um what do you make of Trump second time round? Why do you think people voted for him? And what do you make of of the first, you know, few months? I think a at its core there's some very similar dynamics behind Trump that we've seen here in the last decade um and what we've just been talking about. At its core, the reason why like Trump is is historically not personally very popular, yet he still won. He says a lot of things that are very offensive to people, yet he still won. Why? For very similar reasons to why we won in 2016, why we won 2019, and why Labour won 2024? because he's the person articulating change against the old system. That is at the heart. That's at the heart of it. People will even vote for Trump because they're so completely sick. And also because the Democrats self-radicalized to very extreme positions on various things, but then treated the rest kind of gaslighted the rest of the country into pretending that they were completely now normal and mainstream and centrist. And if you didn't agree with this, then you were a fascist. And that drove people so completely mad that they were willing to say, "Right, okay, Trump." And I think this is a a very hard thing for people in Westminster to understand. Westminster sees Trump as an extremist, right? But if you look at the data in 2016, Trump was seen as an unusually moderate Republican. Moderate, I repeat that. Most people watching the podcast will say he's bonkers. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's smoking crack. But go and look at the data. Go and look at David Shaw, Obama's data science guy, who will explain to you what the data shows. And it's very similar in 2024. More people thought that Camala was crazy left than people thought that that Trump was crazy right. Now, this is totally counternarrative to how the mainstream media projects the whole thing, but as often the media does not project well what the voters are actually thinking. So you have the Democrats actually radicalizing to the left but not realizing what's happened to themselves. Extremely similar phenomenon you can see in Westminster here where a whole bunch of Westminster's finest have moved to blue sky where they've radicalized themselves to the left but are telling themselves that they're completely in the center and everyone else is fascist and is being fooled by disinformation on social media. Right. So overall I think um very very very similar dynamics. The voters want change. The mainstream is radicalized to the left and radicalized against change. And the voters say, "Well, we don't like any of the existing things, but we're prepared to vote for weird things if it means somehow throwing a rock in the pool and forcing Washington to to change direction." Okay. And what do you make of the involvement of Elon Musk? Are you talking to people around Elon Musk? because there was that there the stories around you know him tweeting about stuff that was quite detailed British politics grooming gangs Jess Phillips tuttier all of that and people were kind of speculating that it was your language I know you said you I mean you wouldn't you're not writing tweets for him obviously that's it was all a bit weird I mean number 10 for reasons I don't I don't know why why possibly they believed it possibly not but number 10 started briefing everybody that I was talking to Elon and writing his tweets and was organ organizing this campaign completely not true. It was a rumor just going around Westminster. I mean I heard it a bunch of times from loads of different people. Yeah. I suddenly in like 5 days suddenly everyone was texting me saying I hear that blah blah blah. So one of those rumors that goes around but as often rumors about me completely false and that was one of them. Never spoke actually never spoke to me long in my life. Okay. Um I had a few email back and forth with him in 20 1920 but that was about kind of space stuff in number 10. who wasn't about um wasn't about anything political and uh no contact with him since 2020. I think probably just obviously we know some of the same people in in Silicon Valley and that's probably people just put two two together and got five. Do you think is that some kind of is that kind of conversations that you're having with people that's filtering through to him do you think or um well there's obviously a lot of people I speak to in America about politics and technology and and whatnot and therefore you know there's overlapping there's overlapping networks obviously I mean a lot of people I talk to in Silicon Valley and Washington know him are friends with him are engaged with Doge work in the White House whatever so I think it's probably just that sort of thing and um and then people have kind of heard some rumors and then put them together and got the wrong answer. Okay. But no, I've not I've never spoken to Elon. I don't write his tweets. Don't know who's writing his tweets. Not to do nothing to do with me. I just wanted to ask you as well, we've talked about, you know, your time in in number 10 and even though it was quite quite short, it had obviously a massive impact. than before that of course Brexit and the campaign and um I think it's sort of generally accepted wisdom in Westminster right that I mean not not just in Westminster but beyond that you're the person that kind of masterminded the Brexit campaign that got it over the line you're then the person that won Boris's big majority installed him you're then the person that removed him I think even by your own admission and kind of brought down that government that was a very uh tumultuous period of time in British politics. Lots of aspects of that you could argue have eroded trust quite significantly. Do you feel any responsibility for that or do you have any regrets about that? I mean obviously the biggest regret is that um well I think two two big things. One is that after we won the referendum, the way in which the system then just kind of imploded for three years and drove the country into that nightmare constitutional crisis unprecedented for at least a century, maybe longer, was obviously a terrible thing. It meant that the whole Brexit process became uh extremely polarized in the country. It undermined Britain's reputation around the world. It made us look what we were, which is the shambles. Um, and it was all super bad. And all those people that kind of really believed in Brexit and suddenly kind of had hope in the political system again. I think then on the other side of it felt like, oh, it was just another sham. It was just another lie. I was just sold a dream again. And it was kind of you that sold them the dream. And I know you feel like the system like worked against you to stop you delivering it. But do you kind of feel like I wish I hadn't done that and that was No, no, I don't think that at all. I think I'm I'm more happy now that we won that we won the referendum than ever. I think the whole direction of which the which the EU has gone in has vindicated what we said would happen. If you go back and look at the interviews I gave back in 2015 2016 about what would happen in the future about the rise of extremist parties in Europe. I mean I remember saying giving interviews to people like the economist in 2015 saying look at what's happening in places like Germany and the rise of extremist parties there. Like this is going to be really really bad in the next 10 20 years and they just all burst out laughing right. So, everyone now forgets what the actual arguments were back then. Uh, if you look at the arguments we made in 2015, 2016 about the future of the EU and technology and economic stagnation, it's all happening in London. Now, what do you see? You see young people leaving the EU, some of them stopping in London, and a lot of them going off to Dubai, Texas, California because of things like the EU AI act and other ways in which Europe is kneecapping itself for the future. So I think in terms of the big arguments that we made I think we were right but the big thing has been that you know that the process has meant that white wall has actually become responsible can't hide behind the EU anymore can't blame the ECJ for everything going wrong and it's exposed just how rotten and useless uh political parties and and white wall have been so That's obviously been super depressing for everybody, but I think also like a necessary change, right? Like this this the confrontation with reality had to happen one way or the other and it's happened partly helped along by the nightmares of co in Ukraine. For me, the biggest sort of regret/d disappointment is the is the obvious one. We won a big majority in the end of 19. We said we were going to do a whole bunch of things. We said we understood what the country wanted. We said we're going to change on the economy. We said we're going to change on public services, on defense, on security, on how whiteall worked on everything. We started doing that in 2020 and then of course everything basically went in exactly the opposite direction. So people then got literally the opposite of what we promised in 2019. And I think one of the reasons why I think the toy part might just be done is just the stark extraordinary contrast between what we said we would do in 2019 and then what they did once the vote leave team left number 10. That contrast is a massive massive hole and I'm not sure the tries are ever going to climb out of it. But apart from the politics, it's just been a disaster for the country, right? because you had every single ne pretty much every single negative um trend that was going on in that time before 2019 almost every single negative trend continued um and that you know and that and and that's why the country now has unprecedented stagnation productivity nightmare and and why the voters are so extraordinarily miserable. So, do you think it was a mistake to try to deliver what you thought you had promised through through the Brexit referendum? No, of course not. Via No. No. Via somebody like Boris Johnson. Well, you can't. Was hitching your wagon to Boris Johnson a mistake? But people ask those and then it fell out, you know, you kind of fell out with him. Could you have done more to stay in there with him? But people ask those kind of questions as if as if like there's some magical solution like the the situ there's a choice. There's a choice for you. You I mean you you I had a choice. Boris came Boris came in summer 19 and said like will you come in here and I could have said no and if we'd said no and just left the the useless old Tory party to deal with it then everything would have collapsed into election there have been a second referendum second referendum. Well would there have been a second referendum because of course probably what would actually now we now know what would have happened is the system would have melted down and then hit COVID and then what probably would have happened I think is they have said oh well we just can't do Brexit now. And I dread to think what would have happened. One of the main reasons why I did come back was I thought that more important than Brexit or more important than leave or remain was do elections matter and the way in which the establishment started to mobilize behind trying to cancel referendum I thought was much much more destructive than anything else. So, one of the main reasons why I came back was I thought that if you have a combination of Corbyn and the establishment essentially canceling the referendum and saying 17.4 million people are the biggest ever democratic exercise. We've around for three years because we don't agree with you and now we're just canceling it. Thanks very much. Because we just don't we just no, we're not going to do what you want. I thought that would have been a much much bigger political disaster than pretty much anything and very very dangerous. I think it would have led to a lot of violence. I think it would have led to a proper meltdown. So, I'm glad that I did come back. I'm glad that we won the 2019 election. Um, uh, people say, "Oh, you know, but why did you rely on Boris?" What? Like, what was I supposed to do? Have a military coup and install someone else? I mean, you know, it wasn't me, it wasn't me that put that put Boris in as as leader of the Tory party or or or prime minister. the MPs did because the white the Westminster system is as rotten as it is. It throws up dud characters like him and Liz Truss and Kesta but the rest of us all are stuck in this nightmare of having to work with these completely dreadful useless characters. Right? That's why the big question is now is can we generate a movement whereby all the wonderful people in this country who are talented and can build things and do know what the hell they're doing, why can't we get them involved with politics? Why can't we get them in as ministers? Why can't we get them in to senior jobs in Whiteall? You know, this is possible. If you go back to summer 2020, what did we do in the total crisis there? We put the former commanding officer of 22 SAS and we put him in charge of rapid testing and then things actually worked. He sent his mates in the SAS around the country and they actually built stuff and bought stuff and drove around while all the other useless wankers in Westminster were just sharing PowerPoint me powerpoints, right? So there are great people in this country who can do things. They're blocked from this by the political nightmare in Westminster. So the question for all of us is how do we unblock this? What force can we create that can flush out the current the old the two old parties flush out the old civil service system and get in some of the great people that there are in the country. The only thing that I thought at the time I remember the Rose Garden thing and I I thought uh cuz I I thought I wonder if this is just kind of ramping it up. Well, the whole thing was completely stupid, right? the whole thing should just should never have happened. Like everyone knew what the actual reality was. We agreed a plan and then he just completely lost his mind and said, "Oh my god, this is all a complete disaster. Like we can't tell people that. We can't do that. You're going to have to go go and give a press conference." Yeah. Like what? Just stop panicking. When you're dealing with people who panic and and don't see straight um you often don't have any good options. Just on Boris, I I have heard you say or or have you said that you kind of, you know, you brought him down. I mean, you you orchestrated his removal from office. Is that fair to say? Um, it's definitely the case that um after I left in pretty quickly in 2021, he started saying a whole bunch of things about what happened on CO that were just fundamentally untrue. I remember watching a press conference he gave with Hanok and they both they both both just said, "Oh no, there was plan A and we just did plan A and there was no plan B. I don't know what you're talking about and her immunity was never the plan and blah blah blah." So he just started completely lying about everything and rewriting history and then a lot of the media just kind of went along with it. That was bad. But then also like in on area after area um the way in which he just started doing the exact opposite of what we said we were going to do uh was bad very bad. Um and so yeah me and a few other people said okay like as you asked before about questions of responsibility like we got this put this guy in there uh with the 2019 election. We told people we were going to do a whole bunch of things. He's now doing the opposite. Okay, we should get rid of him. She got rid of him. Yeah. Got rid of him. And I think that was uh all to the good. When someone if when an elephant goes rogue, then there's not much else you can do. You have to you have to remove them. Um and just finally, uh how do you see uh British politics developing over the next few years? And I think we've already discussed this, but what do you think? Do you think you might have any role in it? Um, I think that uh well, it's great it's great news that the realization that both the old parties are knackered and white hall is knackered is spreading far and wide. It was a very niche view a decade ago. Now it's kind of obvious and particularly when you talk to younger people um it just seems obvious. A lot of the arguments that I've made about the system um which seemed weird don't seem weird now to to people who are 18. Um so I think it's good that reality is is sinking in across the country. It's good that there are more and more dissident from inside the Westminster system facing up to these things. Um I think it's good in a way I think it's probably like a necessary thing that you have a kind of two pure establishment supporters in a row Sunnak and Star whose fundamental belief is to defend White Hall and defend the old system both there giving it their best. No one can say that like Boris where he's not really on our side and that's why it didn't work. There you've got two people who the system said we can work with them and who are relatively high performers inside the system and they're both completely imploded in almost exactly the same ways. That tells anyone who's not brain dead that it's not about them, it's about Whiteall. So it's great that that realization is spreading. Um and I think the other thing to be optimistic about is finally one thing to be optimistic about um a bunch of young people are leaving the country which is bad but the ones who want to stay are increasingly get are getting involved and are going to get involved with politics and often you know this is just the historical pattern of things right it's it's usually only when crisis comes that certain things happen and the fact that the old system is now so visibly completely broken means that a whole bunch of young talented people are saying okay well if we're not going to leave the country we're going to have to get involved and try and change things and I think that's also something that I think Westminster hasn't really can't really see because this is something that's happening by definition away from Westminster but you can feel that dynamic growing everywhere um how it expresses itself hard to know right now and it goes back in a way to what I said about Farage there's this huge latent energy that he could tap into if he plays his cards right and he could get a whole bunch of this talent and money could suddenly sweep in and the old system would just be completely stunned. If he does that'll be one that's one path the future could take. If he doesn't so there's you you see a scenario where Farage could be prime minister. Oh yeah. Yeah. Could definitely happen now. Yeah. Because the old system is just so completely broken. Yeah. Like it's broken enough that that that could easily happen. Um, if he does what I'm suggesting and actually and sets out a path for how the reform is going to change, how reform is going to bring in people, how it's structurally going to alter, what it's going to build, how it's going to do policy, how it's going to recruit MPs, etc., etc. If he does that, then there'll be a huge surge of interest and support in into the whole whole thing. Is that what you said to him? Yeah, obviously. Yeah. When I when Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, it's not anything particularly secret. It's what I've said to everyone for years. what I tried to do in number 10, right, is like bring in bring in these people and try and change how the thing works. Yeah. So, if he does that, then it will it will be super popular and it will be effective and the old parties won't know how to cope with it. If he doesn't and can I just ask you, did did he seem like he was kind of listening? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think an interesting aspect of it was he said um he said that uh uh you know he's been around politics for a long time but he hasn't been involved in government and doesn't understand how the government office works but also as he joked well not joking as he said um now I'm in parliament and I talk to the MPs every day I realize they haven't got a clue how the hell the whole system works and now it's not surprising that this truss and co all just got kind of turfed out and why everything was the mess it is and he also realized an an important thing, right, which unless you're in Westminster is very hard to understand, which is that the MPs just don't seem interested in power. It's not what they talk about. They don't they don't discuss why they failed the government. They don't discuss who actually controls the the department. They don't discuss who actually pulls the strings in the cabinet office. Isn't that weird, said Faraj, which of course it is if you're not kind of embedded in Tory world. So, I think that that is interesting. He has a chance to do it. Um whether or not he will, who knows? But if he doesn't, someone else is right. If he doesn't, then he'll implode fast as well and someone else will do it. But the forces now in play are going to express themselves one way or another. System is going to get much worse before it gets better. Chaos is coming in all sorts of ways. All parties are knackered. It's going to be another crisis. Tories are going to get rid of chem, but how that all works itself out could work itself out in different ways and where this kind of energy comes from young able people. Uh where that gets channelled to is also at the moment unclear. Great. Well, Dominic Cummings, thank you very much for speaking to me finally.