Ok. Here’s my prediction. Cummings will be ceremonially sacked.

But he will carry on working for Gove behind the scenes with even less transparency & less accountability.

There is far bigger more consequential play going on here & Cummings is at the heart of it: https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1264141088010493954">https://twitter.com/carolecad...

Cummings will go. The people will rejoice. He will no longer be part of the official apparatus of govt. But Gove & Cummings have been a unit for years & the tech solutionism at the heart of this govt - & its response to COVID-19 is Cummings’s pet project

‘GetBrexitDoneThenARPA’ this is Cummings’s WhatsApp profile. He was promised this. He would help Johnson win the election - using his old friends from @faculty_ai who were immediately gifted part of a £250m untendered contract - & he would get to build his Manhattan Project

The Cabinet Office is where all this is happening. Johnson’s ‘stay alert’ speech was remarkable for something else. An announcement he slipped in: the creation of Joint Biosecurity Centre to be based in Cabinet Office, under minister Michael Gove

This ‘Joint Biosecurity Centre’ is a big deal. It’s transferred management of COVID-19 response from Public Health England to the security services, a massive data surveillance op put in hands of old Etonian from counter terrorism https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/12/former-counter-terror-official-tom-hurd-put-in-charge-new-uk-biosecurity-centre-coronavirus">https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...

At exactly same time, this is slipped out in Cummings’s wife’s publication. 4 non-execs appointed to Cabinet Office. All friends/allies from Vote Leave, one an ex girlfriend of Gove https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-s-whitehall-overhaul-has-just-become-even-more-ambitious">https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/b...