The Last Post: Something is rotten in the state of British democracy

Last week’s Dominic Cummings circus underlined the incompetence and cynicism that powers Boris Johnson and his government’s approach to both Brexit and Covid

Boris Johnson, the British prime minister and his former special adviser Dominic Cummings who spent last week casting his old boss as bungling, indecisive and narcissistic. Picture: Getty

In December 2019, the British electorate was faced with the choice of Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn for prime minister. Johnson and the Tories won a substantial majority of seats – on about 40 per cent of the vote – in that year’s general election, swamping Labour in many of its traditional working-class strongholds.

This was seen by some political analysts as a further endorsement of Brexit, but also as the selection of Johnson over ...