Has Boris Johnson lost his ‘brain’?

Cummins' Brexit slogan was "Take Back Control". His Brexit campaign (which kept politicians in the background) was based on three factors: immigration, global financial crisis and the resulting austerity programmes, and avoiding entry into the Euro. His campaign was run by young outsiders who didn't want to become eventual MPs and so could take risks. It was a stunning success

Cummings was born in 1971 into a middle class family, went to Oxford and married to Mary Wakefield (daughter of Sir Edward, landed gentry) who since 2011 has been associated with Johnson's magazine The Spectator. After graduation he developed business interests in eastern Europe. Maybe he is on the "spectrum"; he refuses to give media interviews; and had only one meeting with Benedict Cumberbatch who played him in 2019's Brexit: The Uncivil War

He loathes journalist and politicians. He is abrasive towards colleagues ("a geek's geek") ("move fast and break things"). He has never been a member of the Conservative Party (or evidently any other political party). He made a name for himself in 2000 in opposing the UK's entry into the Euro; the "Business for Sterling" group's slogan was "keep the pound, keep control" (a sensible campaign in retrospect given the Euro's problems).

UK Prime Minister David Cameron (2010-5) called Cummings a "career psychopath" and tried to limit (without success) his involvement in Whitehall,

Cummings is the most sophisticated person in UK politics. He looks at life via complex systems theory and looks for emergent behaviours. For example if Bismarck had been assassinated on May 7 1866 then there would have been no German unification and no World War I.

He complains that the incentive structure in politics encourages bad (short-term) thinking and that politicians make bad decisions in order to get public approval. He believes there should be more scientists in politics (and fewer lawyers). He believes that politicians are just time-servers and publicity addicts. He is also critical of most civil servants; he thinks they are "public school bluffers".

Therefore he has a technocratic approach to politics. He wants more mathematicians and data scientists running the country (this History graduate has made an effort to educate himself in these fields).

In short, he is too "rational" for the erratic world of British politics, and so he had to go.

But where does that leave Johnson? Johnson has done badly over COVID; his usual Conservative allies oppose the civil rights restrictions. He is failing to deliver on Brexit.

Now he has just lost his "brain". Could Brexit destroy the career of another UK prime minister?