It is apparent that the prime minister regards his special adviser as absolutely indispensable not only to his political project, but to his political survival. The pertinent question is: Why ? There is more than one possible answer. Many Conservative MPs are questioning Johnson's commitment both to neoliberal economics and to no-deal (or, at least, ideologically reassuring, 'hard' ) Brexit, and who suspect, perhaps with justification, that, deep down, he does not really believe in either, if he believes in anything other than the public performance of his own ego. For that reason, the irrational 'easing of the lockdown' (in fact, a desperate attempt to restore capitalism to its deranged 'normality') and Rishi Sunak's premature ending of the furlough scheme are explicable, despite the squeals of business, because Johnson has to demonstrate to his own party that he is conforming to an ideological script. Perhaps, as Cummings' commitment to Brexit, unlike Johnson's, is beyond doubt, his tenure at Downing Street is permanent. This is a plausible explanation. However, there is a more unsettling one.
Cummings' relationship to Johnson has been likened to that of Rasputin with Tsar Nicholas II. However, a more precise comparison is the hold which J. Edgar Hoover had over successive American presidents. This paranoid bigot, who was obsessed with his theory that Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement were a communist conspiracy, was able to blackmail Franklin Roosevelt and Jack Kennedy because, among other things, he could dish the dirt on their infidelities. As Lyndon Johnson said in his imitable fashion, it was better to have Hoover 'inside the tent pissing out' than the opposite. The question needs to be asked: Given Johnson's serial mendacities and betrayals, has Cummings blackmailed him ? Cummings would be able to confirm whether Johnson (and Gove, whose adviser he was for several years) were seriously committed to Brexit, and quite a number of other matters which my immense respect for the office of prime minister (if not for the person tenuously holding on to it) forbids me to mention. I have no tangible evidence to support my supposition, but the question needs to be asked. Johnson is clearly vulnerable to blackmail, on many fronts.