The right-hand man of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was also the brains behind the Brexit Leave campaign. His name is Dominic. Dominic Cummings.
As I type this, Cummings’ future as the top aide hangs in the balance – because at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in April he flouted strict lockdown measures. Which means, while Cummings and his government were telling everyone in the UK to stay put at home and barely nip out even for essentials, he got in his car and drove for five hours north to his parents’ farm in Durham. He claimed the reason for this was his “exceptional circumstance” as a parent of a four-year-old.
A few days later he broke the highway code because of another “exceptional circumstance” – this time driving 100km and back, to test his eyesight and check if he was fit enough to drive back to London.
It’s a veritable case of all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. So much so that for a minute there, I had to go and check if Cummings had attended St Aloysius’ College Sixth Form with Joseph Muscat and his right-hand man Keith Schembri. They creepily talk the same language.
In fact, Cummings and Schembri share an uncanny modus operandi. Both are lovers of slogans which they then don’t apply to themselves. ‘Stay home’ said Cummings – except he didn’t. ‘Tagħna lkoll’ Schembri told us – except that he illicitly fattened his pockets.
Both have led political campaigns with dirty mitts, happily lying to mislead the public. Both broke all ethical rules of social media use and both used people’s profile data to their own advantage.
Both also believe that the media has to play their tune or else they are kicked out of press conferences and branded enemies of the state. Both are reticent to answer to the public. Both don’t care if their country is left in chaos as long as they survive.
Both were unwilling to knock a scandal on its head by resigning. But both happen/ed to be top aides of prime ministers who go/went to extremes to avoid giving them the order of the boot.
Both are experts at wheeling out the age-old quibble that “it’s all a nasty scheme of the other party, boohoo”.
It seems that the British people are not easily gaslighted into thinking that if they demand justice, they’d be either traitors or ‘holier than thou’- Kristina Chetcuti
Of course, the parallels stop there. Cummings, unlike Schembri, was not implicated in the assassination of a journalist uncovering his corruption.
And he’s not making his fellow citizens pay exorbitant utility bills so he can secretly pocket money like Schembri does.
But what was the reaction of the UK’s society at large to Cummings’ crisis?
When the Cummings scandal was exposed last week, the British police had a choice. They could either: a) go for a fenkata; b) phone the PM and ask him “x’nagħmlu tgħid Prim?”; or c) hold an emergency meeting and kick-start immediate police investigations. You’ll be surprised to find that they opted for c.
Meanwhile, the UK government cheerleaders tried to whitewash Cummings’ law-breaking as a “plot by the other party” but were met with a dead wall.
Unlike their Maltese counterparts, government MPs would have none of it, and more than 60 of them made outright public calls for Cummings to be sacked. They also publicly grilled Johnson about the sorry debacle, and one of his ministers even resigned in protest.
What about the media? It was all-round condemnation, even by Johnson’s former employer, his darling The Daily Telegraph. But perhaps the Daily Star tabloid summed up the general feeling: the front page was a huge cut-out-and-keep Dominic Cummings face mask with a caption reading: “Free ‘do whatever the hell you want and sod everybody else’ mask”.
The vibe was reflected in surveys too. If you’ll remember, in Malta, at the height of the Muscat-Schembri scandal last November, the Labour Party barely lost an inch of its popularity.
In Britain last week, the government had the worst opinion polls in more than a decade.
It seems that the British people are not easily gaslighted into thinking that if they demand justice, they’d be either traitors or ‘holier than thou’ – the majority simply won’t accept unethical behaviour.
In fact, this is a clear example of what happens when people who are meant to be leading, do not lead by example. Cummings’ actions are now encouraging others to flout lockdown rules. In Malta, Schembri’s actions encouraged everyone to flout tax rules. Why should I lock myself inside; why should I pay taxes?
But in both cases, the prime ministers were understudies. The real leader is not that elected by the people but the man who made it possible for the prime minister to be elected. And that is why instead of protecting the nation, they keep protecting one man.
In Britain, Cummings won’t be fired because he’s the prime minister’s ‘dear Dom’.
In Malta, as we know, Schembri eventually ‘resigned’ to a ‘dear Keith’ farewell speech by Muscat.
The burning question for our country, at this juncture, is: since Schembri is still out there brazenly flouting all sorts of legalities, is our new Prime Minister, Robert Abela, still under his spell too?
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti