Cummings' plan is the Brexit that hardline Remainers deserve

The return of Dominic Cummings to frontline politics as adviser to the new Prime Minister has prompted febrile reactions among his critics.

The former Vote Leave campaign director has never been a people pleaser. David Cameron, now two prime ministers ago, is said to have branded Cummings a “career psychopath” after his time at the Department for Education under Michael Gove.

More recently, the Observer journalist Nick Cohen accused Cummings of “vacuity”, describing his thinking style like that of “performers who play to their audiences’ prejudices” beneath “a cloak of learned references so their listeners can pretend they are hearing something more substantial than pub talk”.

Even the Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage slates Cummings as “untrustworthy” and not a “true believer” in Brexit, Cummings having sidelined the Faragists during the referendum campaign believing the then UKIP leader would deter swing voters.

As if in response to all this, Cummings has reportedly said that MPs can no longer prevent the UK from leaving the EU without a deal on October 31. Should the House of Commons pass a motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister, Cummings said the government could schedule an election after October so a no-deal Brexit happens before the vote.

There is some dispute about how watertight this plan is, not least from determined Remainers such as the Conservative MP and former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who said that if Johnson lost a confidence vote the Commons could form a new government to replace him. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has even written to Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sidwell, the UK’s top civil servant, asking him to intervene and calling a no-deal Brexit during an election an “anti-democratic abuse of power”.

Constitutional experts are split on who’s right, but it’s hard to dispute that Cummings’ plan is unsporting.

It’s not the first time that Leave campaigners have been accused of underhand play. Vote Leave was fined £61,000 for breaching spending limits in the referendum, while Leave.EU was linked to the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica before it folded over allegations of data misuse. But Remainers have scant cause for self-righteousness. Since the referendum, hardline Remain campaigners have made every attempt to undermine the result and prevent it being implemented.

Despite Parliament authorising the referendum with the backing of Cameron’s government, some Remainers have argued the public was too ill-informed to vote, that campaigning was not properly regulated, and even that, in principle, Britain should never have been offered a chance to leave the EU.

Others have taken to legal shenanigans to stymie attempts to leave, Gina Miller being only the most prominent Remain campaigner to rush to the courts. In throwing out one Remainer case in February, Lord Justice Hickinbottom cited a previous judgement to express his view: “Judicial review is not, and should not be regarded as, politics by another means.”

Reference to Edmund Burke’s 18th-century musings about not sacrificing an MP’s judgement to voters’ mere opinions is now as tired as MPs’ willingness to pick whichever mandate suits them. The weakening contract between voter and representative has been further hurt by the creative parliamentary manoeuvres facilitated by Speaker John Bercow’s unprecedented rulings.

Cummings’ creative interpretation of our constitution is thus in keeping with many hardline Remainers’ rule-bending tactics throughout the last three years. Whatever the risks of leaving without a deal, hardline Remainers cannot complain that somebody is willing to stoop low too.