Dom Cummings: history shows it usually ends badly for a leader’s favourite

Those of us who studied history in what is now, I suppose, an old-fashioned way with our attention directed to kings and queens, government and high politics will remember how often “favourites” turned up and how deeply they were resented, even hated. This was because they were often outsiders, foreigners or considered to be “low born”. The favourite had too much influence on the monarch, influence which properly belonged to those who were entitled by reason of their birth and social standing to consider themselves his natural and proper councillors.

The favourite often came to a sticky end. Piers Gaveston, the Gascon knight beloved by Edward II, was seized by disgruntled barons and had his head chopped off. James III of Scotland’s favourite, an architect called Robert Cochran whom the king had made Earl of Mar, previously a royal title, was hanged by jealous barons. Mary Stuart’s Italian Secretary, David Rizzio, was murdered in her presence by a gang of noble thugs. George Villiers, a country squire, who as the favourite of first James VI & I and then of James’s son Charles I, rose to be Duke of Buckingham, in effect chief minister, was first impeached by the House of Commons before being murdered, to general delight, by a disgruntled officer.

Even when a low-born man rose to become a powerful minister by talent and ability rather than personal charm his humble origin was still held against him. Hilary Mantel’s hero, Thomas Cromwell, is a good example. Historians, admiring his ability, have rarely described him as a favourite, but that is how the leaders of the rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace perceived him. The king could do no wrong; so they marked the minister, the powerful favourite, as the villain and their enemy.  When Cromwell lost the king’s favour because he had promoted Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves, whom the old ogre found sexually repulsive, men of noble birth rejoiced as the fallen favourite was hurried to the scaffold. The Earl of Surrey, son of Cromwell’s bitter enemy, the Duke of Norfolk, made their position clear: “Now is the false churl dead. These newly erected men would, by their wills, leave no noble man a life.”

With the coming of parliamentary politics, the word “favourite,” dropped out of use, might seem as obsolete as the executioner’s block on Tower Green, but, though the word is out-of-date, Prime Ministers still have favourites, men or women in whom they repose a trust they may deny their Cabinet colleagues, many of whom have the wit to recognize the importance of pleasing the favourite , no matter how they resent his or her influence and even power. Sometimes in these gentler times, the favourite stays the course, as Harold Wilson’s secretary, Marcia Williams, whom some thought his mistress, did to the last days of his time in Downing Street. Ministers might resent or fear her influence; prudent ones cultivated her interest. Mrs Thatcher reposed so much trust in her favourite economist, Sir Alan Walters, that her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, was provoked to resign; it was for him intolerable that the Prime Minister would take advice from her unelected favourite rather than from her Chancellor, the senior Treasury minister.

The most powerful favourite in the twentieth century was Alastair Campbell. First as Tony Blair’s Press Secretary, then as his Director of Communications, he was a key figure in the creation and development of New Labour, in effect one of the governing triumvirate beside Blair and Gordon Brown. He did not hesitate to give orders to Cabinet Ministers and senior Civil Servants, even though he had no constitutional entitlement to do so. A man, like some other favourites, of intelligence, ability and great energy, he was, not surprisingly, resented and feared in equal measure. Yet ultimately  he depended on the support and friendship of the Prime Minister, and he resigned, at the time of Lord Hutton’s Inquiry into the death of the scientist Dr David Kelly who had questioned the conclusions reached in the dossier produced to justify the 2003 Iraq War, because he had now become a liability rather than an asset.

Now there is a new favourite in Downing Street, Dominic Cummings. He not only gives orders to Government Ministers and senior Civil Servants, but, by his own admission, seeks to revolutionise Government. He gives the impression of managing the Prime Minister, deciding where and when he should speak and what he should say. His determination to exercise control of the Treasury by appointing the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s special advisers provoked the resignation of the Chancellor Sajid Javed who said, correctly, that this was something no self-respecting minister could accept. The speed with which a successor was appointed suggested that the favourite had executed a successful coup. Certainly, for the moment, the favourite rides high, even as high as Thomas Cromwell who also sought to revolutionise Government, in his case with considerable success.

Yet a favourite’s position is, as Cromwell knew, always precarious. The clue is in the word. The favourite depends on retaining the favour of the monarch or Prime Minister. If that favour is withdrawn, he falls. A favourite is always dispensible. If he pushes his power too far and makes too many important enemies, he becomes a liability. The monarch may sacrifice him to protect his own position. And when favour is withdrawn, then, as Thomas Gray wrote of the cat which drowned in a goldfish bowl, “a favourite has no friend”. Politics indeed has been described as a goldfish bowl. The favourite is typically an outsider who has been admitted to the inner sanctum, but will one day be shown the door, and ejected. So how long will Dominic Cummings last?