Much as he clearly fancies himself one, Dominic Cummings is not a very stable genius

There is not any method behind Cummings' recruitment madness

So the country’s going to be run by weirdos and misfits. At least, that seems to be Dominic Cummings’ plan. I thought we were already being led by a gang of weirdos and misfits known as “The Cabinet”. I mean, Iliad-reciting Boris Johnson? Gavin Williamson, who keeps a pet tarantula? Rapper Gove? Andrea “I’ve got kids” Leadsom? Dominic Raab, who eats the same Pret A Manger lunch every day (chicken Caesar and bacon baguette, superfruit pot and vitamin volcano smoothie)? Liz Truss, who gets angry about cheese? The recumbent Rees-Mogg? Yes, that lot.

In fact, Cummings has a point. There aren’t enough specialised skills in the civil service, which has long practised the cult of the generalist. Not since the Northcote-Trevelyan Report in 1854 has anyone managed to reform it radically. Just about every prime minister from Churchill to Wilson to Cameron has tried to bring in some innovations: more professionals, scientists, economists, political special advisers, spin doctors, marketisation, in-house think-tanks, policy units, enforcement units, secondments from business, “sofa government”, the lot.

Admittedly these initiatives have made some difference; there are proper economists working on government nowadays, for example (much good it has done us). But the cult of the generalist lives on. A first-class degree in Classics from Baliol and the ability reel off The Iliad in the original, for example, would still be looked upon as qualification for public service.

The irony is that the Cummings’ approach risks repeating the very error it seeks to redress. Cummings is simply replacing one oligarchy of homogenous individuals with another made in his own image. Of course, the group Cummings is hiring will only constitute a fraction of the country’s 400,000 civil servants; but given they will be working directly to Cummings, they will be disproportionately powerful. It essentially looks as through Cummings wants to bypass the existing civil service structures and create his own Praetorian Guard, a policymaking and implementation “private army”.

Hence the unconventional nature of recruitment. Cummings isn’t bothering with any of the usual due process, but has instead decided to manage the hiring himself, and from a private Gmail account. It would make an interesting Freedom of Information request…

This adventure will test Cummings. You can imagine civil servants’ glee when they learn that his unorthodox methods have landed him with an employment tribunal for unfair (ie unlawful) discrimination, with the unlimited damages attached to such cases; or when his menagerie fails to deal with the vast challenge of Brexit. It doesn’t matter how smart or wacky his new hires are – he is not going to get Brexit done by this time next year, because it is impossible. The bureaucracy Cummings is trying to bin may be his undoing.

The trouble with Cummings is that he is not as smart as he thinks he is, nor his enemies quite as stupid as he imagines them to be. We need to understand that Dominic Cummings is not a cross between Alan Turing, Maynard Keynes and Steve Jobs, possessed of superhuman powers to unleash Britain’s potential. He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.