Highlights prior to 2021-04 [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o5pIVShZODYUTDqavT1r68FKRDQ0uo5JI4s-iv-c9bc/edit#heading=h.1ihxqkhxacmj). ## AMA https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/subscriber-only-ask-anything-live/comments ![[Pasted image 20210721205119.png]] ![[Pasted image 20210721205158.png]] Peggy Latham Peggy Latham Total respect for Dom Cummings, loved brexit and support democracy. Reads Peggy Latham23 hr ago Dom, you mentioned that you believe that a new party might be required or changes made to an existing one, but could you elaborate on the third option you spoke about? 1Reply author Dominic Cummings23 hr ago Yup I will explain this soon. This is interesting in meantime: https://1729.com/how-to-start-a-new-country/ ## BBC profile In what turned out to be a dry run for the Brexit campaign, the North East Says No team won the referendum with a mix of eye-catching stunts - including an inflatable white elephant - and snappy slogans that tapped into the growing anti-politics mood among the public. He is then said to have retreated to his father's farm, in County Durham, where he spent his time reading science and history books in an effort to attain a better understanding of the world. He re-emerged in 2007 as a special adviser to Michael Gove, who became education secretary in 2010 and turned out to be something of a kindred spirit. The pair would rail against what they called "the blob" - the informal alliance of senior civil servants and teachers' unions that sought, in their opinion, to frustrate their attempts at reform. He left of his own accord to set up a free school, having alienated a number of senior people in the education ministry and the Conservative Party. He once described former Brexit Secretary David Davis as "thick as mince" and as "lazy as a toad" and irritated David Cameron, the then prime minister, who called him a "career psychopath". ## 2021-05-26 JPC COVID testimony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LFS3FaRs_s  "When the public needed us most, the government failed. And I'd like to say to the families of all those who died unnecessarily how sorry I am for the mistakes that were made, and for my own mistakes at that." Taiwanese govt hit panic button on something like New Years Eve of 2019. Western world completely failed to see the smoke and to hear the alarm bells in January. DC started a push on this on 25th Jan, but "I apologise, I did not follow up on this, in the way that I should have done. We were told at No 10 this is top of the risk register, this has been planned, everyone knows exactly what to do." While I was running red teams on lots of other things in govt at the time, I didn't do it on this. If I had said at the end of January, we're going to take a Saturday and I want all the documents and I want it all gone through and I want outside experts in to look at it all then we'd have figured out, much much earlier, that all the claims about brlliant preparations and how everything was in order were basically completely hollow. But we didn't figure this out until the back end of February. First half of February, less than half of DC time. After the reschuffle (~12th) more than half. Last 10 days of Feb over 90% of DC time. Govt and No 10 was not operating on war footing in February in any way shape or form. Lots of key people were literally skiing in the middle of February. Not until last week of Feb that there was really any sense of urgency in terms of No 10 and the cabinet office. I like most people I think was wrongly reassured by WHO and what we were being told internally. PM was on holiday for 2 weeks from 12th Feb. DC didn't feel he could speak candidly in COBRA meetings for fear of leaks. 12th Mar: COVID hitting the fan, but then Trump says wants UK to join a bombing campaign in the middle east. Also a big press story about PM's dog, and Carrie going crackers about that wanting to use the press office to deal with that. 9pm on 12th: sat down with Ben Warner and Mark Warner to discuss the COVID situation. 8pm on 13th: Helen MacNamara walks in and says I"ve just been talking to Mark Sweeney who is in charge of coordinating with the department for health, and he said, quote: "I've been told for years there is a plan for this. There is no plan. We're in huge trouble." Helen: "I've come here to tell you all, I think we are absolutely fucked. I think this country is heading for disaster, I think we're going to kill thousands of people." Ben Warner, Mark Warner, DC, private sec for health & PM in his study. https://youtu.be/8LFS3FaRs_s?t=3690 DC: I bitterly regret that I didn't hit the emergency panic button earlier than I did. In retrospect there's no doubt that I was wrong not to. All I can say is that my worry was, my mental state at the time was, on the one hand you could sort of know from the last week of February that a whole bunch of things were wrong, it was clear that all the meetings with PHE, that everything was going wrong, everything we pushed, everything we probed was wrong, bad, terrible. But I was incredibly... frightened I guess is the word, about the consequences of me pulling a massive emergency panic string and saying the official plan is wrong, and it's gonna kill everyone, and you've gotta change plan. Because what if I'm wrong?! What if I persuade him, that, you know, to change tack and that's a disaster? Everyone was telling me that if we go down this alternative path, it's going to be five times worse in the winter. What if that's the consequence? Meeting of the 12th March: Cabinet secretary said, PM you should go on TV tomorrow and explain to people the herd immunity plan, and say it's like the old chicken pox parties. We need people to get this disease, so we can get to herd immunity by September. And I (DC) said "Mark you've gotta stop using this chicken pox analogy, it's not right." And he said "why?". And Ben Warner said "because chicken pox is not spreading exponentially and killing hundreds of thousands of people." And you could sense in the whole room, there was this kind of shock. And it was only really at that moment that we realised that—and to stress, this wasn't some weird thing the Cabinet Secretary had come up with, he was saying what the official advice to him from the Department of Health was—so it was a huge big deal for me and for Ben Warner to say, basically, we think that this whole thing is wrong. Mark Logan: Why weren't you able to nail the response? I didn't pay enough attention to it early enough, for sure. DC started sharing docs with Prof Tim Gowers and Demis Hassabis of DeepMind, two very smart ppl. "They actually could understand these things."Combination of Mark Warner, Demis Hassabis, Tim Gowers, you had three incredibly able people who could understand the technicalities in a way that I couldn't, gave me the kind of confidence to say to the PM that we should change. But it's obvious in retrospect that I just left this whole thing until far far too late, and I am terrible sorry about that. I should have done this in in... I should have done this in January, is the reality. It was literally a classic historical exmaple of group think in action, and because the process was closed... that's what happens in closed bubbles. If we'd opened up the deliberations in January and got the responses of smart people we'd have figured this out at least 6 weeks earlier. In Jan and Feb a lot of people thought the real danger was the overreaction to it damaging the economy. Furlough plan was put together out of thin air in a couple of days. Shielding plan was put together out of thin air over a couple of all nighters. There was no existing plan for shielding. There wasn't any system at all setup to deal with proper emergency procurement. People were talking about shipping PPE from China (takes weeks), not thinking about commandeering aeroplanes. https://youtu.be/8LFS3FaRs_s?t=5860 There's a very profound question about the nature of our political system that means that we got at the last election a choice between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson. I think any system that ends up giving people a choice between two people like that as the two people to lead is obviously a system that's gone extremely extremely badly wrong. There's so many thousands and thousands of wonderful people in this country that could provide better leadership than either of those two, and there's obviously something terribly wrong with political parties if that's the best they can do. And I don't exclude myself of this. In any sensible rational government it is completely crazy that I should have been in such a senior position, in my personal opinion. I'm not smart, I've not built great things in the world, it's 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 the choice at the last election was Jeremy Corbyn. [...] The crisis was very much about lions led by donkeys over and over again. With great people on the ground doing things. But the leadership, people like me, the prime minister and the secretary of health, we let down the people on the front line. You guys in political parties need to be asking yourselves: what is it about your parties that gives us choices like Johnson vs Corbyn. And we have to ask, what is it about Whitehall that promotes so many senior people who are completely out of their depth.