The Cumming’s interview was going to be like the next marvel superhero blockbuster but for boring people. Think less ‘Captain America beating up nazis’ and more ‘sad creepy old man whines for an hour’.
Much like any highly anticipated release it turned out to be significantly underwhelming. It was simply Cummings giving us a clearly rehearsed revision of recent history, designed to make him seem like the only rational and competent person in government. As opposed to the reckless and selfish SPAD who forced Brexit and Boris upon a nation unready for either. Cleverly delivered with his trademark, seemingly uncaring, bravado – as though none of us can remember anything beyond last week.
Aside from a few out of context quotes being bandied about by my fellow Boris bashers, little was actually gleaned from his performance. Dom deigned only to give us a masterclass in avoiding responsibility in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary. This weasel has held a leading role in near enough every political crisis of the last 5 years.
Is he suddenly innocent of all the shit he has put us through and will put us through as we suffer the consequences of his seemingly unchecked influence within the leadership of the current Conservative party leadership and the political right? Is he fuck.
Factor in some truly pathetic questions from the ever unreliable Laura Kuenssberg and the entire thing was a farce from start to finish. When even someone who reckons Cummings is a vile piece of work believes that your questions were stupid, pointless and designed purely to create quotes that would lead to outrage and in turn more clicks, then you know you’ve screwed up.
The Cumming’s interview is the final nail in the coffin of journalistic integrity in the United Kingdom (or Murdoch land as it will soon come to be known). The BBC appears content to report almost any claim without bothering to provide context or point out whether or not it is true or false. To butcher an old adage: ‘if one person says it’s raining and another says it isn’t, your job is not to report them both as equally valid statements, your job is to look out the fucking window’. This is something the BBC appears to have forgotten in recent years, with some exceptions in fairness. The Prime minister is a disgraced former journalist who was repeatedly fired for lying and falsifying quotes, even from his own family. A stalwart defender of the free press he is not.
Without a serious turn around this absence of journalistic rigour and utter lack of context or clarity around the statements of those in significant positions of power we must resign ourselves to a life of looking out the window constantly to see if it really is sunny or if it’s pissing down, as we shan’t be able to trust anyone else to do it for us.
Dom was allowed to present himself as the one sane, decent, principled person in government during this crisis. When, in reality, anyone with two brain cells left to rub together can see that for the utter bullshit it is.
Illustration: Adam Losekoot