Comment by cjs_ac
15 hours ago
This fits quite neatly with Dominic Cummings' comments to the House of Lords Constitutional Committee[0] about how the British Civil Service can't do anything because no one with any talent wants to work there.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBBYvj4YQLE (full video is an hour and a half, but you can skip to any bit because he just makes the same handful of points over and over again)
Here's the link to Parliament's own on-demand video: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/c32e3478-65af-41b2-aa7...
I'm somewhat dubious of a Youtube channel called "Western Liberty" that was created the day of Cummings's testimony, which contains nothing but the session and short clips of it. Using the link above avoids any potential ad revenue going to that clearly political pointed channel.
For anyone that's interested, here are the links to the other sessions of this committee:
- 22nd April 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/e79ae489-4db6-4159-88b...
- 3rd June 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/f27d8b93-b09d-433a-8e6...
- 10th June 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/097aadbd-b58d-4f76-90e...
- 15th July 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/87f1e00f-82b5-432b-af6...
- 2nd September 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/110f81a5-32c4-4577-bab...
- 16th September 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/ecf7a237-54c9-40be-922...
Dammit, my edit window ran out of time. Alas. While the 22nd April, 3rd June, and 10th June sessions are from that committee, they are unrelated to the inquiry of constitutional safeguards. Skip to the 15th July session. Here's a link to the inquiry: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9861/the-uks-constitut...
Anyway, after watching the session with Cummings, I have to say I'm deeply unimpressed with his contribution. While I found his bluntness somewhat refreshing, he was clearly irritated at being (repeatedly) asked to suggest actual solutions instead of just using the session as a pulpit for his grievances.
Failing to do anything constructive about the problems he’s identified is Cummings’ whole thing though.
He’s like an incompetent Cassandra: people keep on agreeing with his diagnoses, giving him power in the hope that he’ll fix things at which point he makes a complete hash of everything and leaves in a huff having made things worse than they were before.
If the right ever takes power in the UK in the near-ish future I expect us to go through exactly this cycle again. Cummings seems to be very bad at the politics of driving organisational change & making it stick, which is ironic given that criticising public bodies is what he spends so much of his time doing.
Sure, but even if he provides no solutions, providing insight into the problems is a worthwhile contribution.
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"parliamentlive.tv" doesn't sound any more reputable, but apparently it's official despite the foreign TLD!
Cummings is an absolute crank. He had the opportunity to try and he ended up failing spectacularly, like Liz Truss or Yannis Varoufakis.
It’s funny because "no one with talent wants to work there" would explain an organization failure only if there were a competitive job market, one where talented people can freely choose their employer. There isn't, so the actual description is that the British Civil Service, due to having crappy managers and policies, can't do anything useful.
I'm pretty sure that if we ask the operative layer what should the policies be, they wouldn't even pursue this goal
He also talked with Dwarkesh Patel: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dominic-cummings
Utter rubbish. Civil servants can't get anything done because they are chronically underfunded, and yanked around by the whims of the government of the day. Dominic Cummings' is not a reliable source either - he's ideologically at odds with the idea of government _doing_ anything, and because of that has caused a great deal of harm to the UK.