Did Dominic Cummings ever know what he was doing?

The prime minister’s chief of staff has a reputation as a tactical genius, but everything just keeps going wrong, writes John Rentoul

(Reuters)

Dominic Cummings’s reputation rests above all on the Vote Leave slogan on the side of the bus: “We send the EU £350m a week.” The Remain side were driven into a fury, denouncing it as untrue, which it was, but the more they denounced it the more they drew attention to one of the core Leave arguments.

Because Cummings’s Leave campaign won the referendum, he was regarded as a tactical genius – and his reputation was sealed by being portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in the docudrama of the campaign.

This single example of using the indignation of the other side to his side’s advantage generated the meme on social media in response to every setback for Boris Johnson, for whom Cummings is now chief of staff: “Classic Dom, he’s got them right where he wants them.”