[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)
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...
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.
For example, he claims that legal experts, regardless of their political leanings, agree that the small-boats crisis cannot be solved without primary-legislative changes to the Human Rights Act. Does he mention how the HRA is obstructive? No. Does he mention even one change to the HRA that would help? No. Does he mention the scale of changes required? No.
What's funny is that I'd actually use his HRA example as an example of our constitutional safeguards working exactly as intended: it's for Parliament to decide what our human rights are and their extent, not the whims of ministers. That the Prime Minister and Parliament are refusing to make those changes because they find them to be politically untenable is actually how a democratic system ought to work.
In fact, I'd summarise his testimony as him being irritated at constitutional safeguards working as intended. For example, he claimed that the biggest enemy to British Special Forces is not Russia, China, or Iran but the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence lawyers. Oh no, our ministries are operating within the law! How terrible! He seems to advocate for ministers and ministries to instead adopt an 'ask for forgiveness, not permission' mindset with regards to the law, particularly given his testimony on how things were done during the chaos of the pandemic:
> That led to some very big decisions inside No. 10 where, essentially, I said on behalf of the PM, for example, "Call the airlines. Commandeer the planes. Fly the planes to China. Pick up all our PPE. Fly back here. We don't care if the officials all say it's unlawful. If we don't get all this PPE back, God knows how many doctors and nurses are going to die as a consequence. Do it, and, if there's a judicial review that says it's all illegal, whatever, the PM will deal with that down the line".
Trouble is, he thinks they're thixotropic - give 'em a big whack to get them moving faster - when they're actually by design closer to being rheopectic, absorbing sudden stresses to protect the nation.
So when faced with the multiple sudden gyrations in policy that we saw under the final five years of the last government, they of course acted as a dampener. That's what they're there for, that's why they're so valuable. But if you don't shock them and instead apply constant pressure in a consistent direction, they'll move smoothly, efficiently, and effectively.
For a good example of that, see Francis Maude's term in the Cabinet Office in the first half of the 2010s which changed the civil service very much for the better and was responsible for, amongst others, GDS, the Government Security Group, and a lot of open government initiatives.
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.
His problem is he doesn't understand politics, and like Musk he's wasted his time getting involved with the worst people instead of focusing on what he's good at.
I'm pretty sure that if we ask the operative layer what should the policies be, they wouldn't even pursue this goal