Sir Bernard Ingham: 'Weirdo' Dominic Cummings behind plans for White House-style briefings, Margaret Thatcher's spokesman says
The former Downing Street spokesman claims the new post is "a constitutional outrage" and condemns the PM's adviser.
Thursday 6 August 2020 16:48, UK
Plans for White House-style Downing Street news conferences on live TV have been denounced by the most colourful Number 10 spokesman of recent years, Sir Bernard Ingham.
He blames "the malevolent presence of Dominic Cummings", Boris Johnson's "weirdo" adviser, and claims the new post of Downing Street TV spokesman is "a constitutional outrage".
He also condemns the government's handling of coronavirus, describing it as "a confused mess and incoherent", and claims ministers are "occasionally all over the show".
Sir Bernard, now 88, was Margaret Thatcher's spokesman during her 11 years as prime minister from 1979-1990. His typically blunt verdict comes in his weekly column in the Yorkshire Post.
In his off-camera briefings behind closed doors in the 1980s, a florid-faced Sir Bernard would often vent his displeasure at journalists by banging the table with his fist and spluttering "Bunkum and balderdash!" or "Dammit!"
He was brutal, too, when slapping down ministers who displeased Mrs Thatcher, notoriously deriding John Biffen as a "semi-detached" member of the cabinet and comparing Francis Pym to a wartime radio character "Mona Lott".
Several decades later, self-deprecatingly calling himself "an aged cantankerous grump", Sir Bernard has unleashed his fury at Mr Cummings, in a savage attack on Number 10's plan to recruit a £100,000 TV spokesman or woman.
"At its heart is the malevolent presence of Dominic Cummings, the prime minister's principal adviser, who thinks the Civil Service is pretty useless and the machine would be in the better hands of weirdos like himself," Sir Bernard writes.
But a defiant Mr Cummings has hit back, with a source close to him telling the Daily Mail: "Government communications has changed since the secrecy of Sir Bernard's day. Voters want and deserve more accountability."
Sir Bernard begins his column by revealing: "My mischievous friends are urging me to apply for the £100,000-a-year job as government spokesman giving daily televised White House-style media briefings. No chance. I am no masochist.
"I had my fill of media blood sport and bear-baiting conducted behind closed doors as Margaret Thatcher's press secretary in the 1980s.
"In any case, the sight of this aged cantankerous grump pontificating daily would put people off politics for life while feeding the media's enduring fascination with my eyebrows.
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"More seriously, I have my principles. The post is a constitutional outrage even if we have been subjected to televised briefings since the onset of coronavirus.
"It is a further ill-considered undermining of our parliamentary democracy. And parliament will be for ever damned if it permits this further step down the road to US-style presidential government. Don't hold your breath."
Sir Bernard adds: "The government is not short of official spokesmen. What it lacks is a coherent approach to as tough a set of problems as any faced by a British government since the Second World War."
And offering advice to would-be applicants for the new post, he writes: "Nobody in their right mind should take the job without a clear understanding of their unlimited access to and close relationship with the PM.
"As I know only too well, you cannot properly represent the boss through somebody else's filter, whether in the shape of Cummings or arrogant administrators who think their job is to protect you from too much knowledge.
Attacking the government's handling of coronavirus, he writes: "Attitudes are all wrong. It is not hindsight to say that a certain humility was required at the outset of a pandemic caused by a new virus with still no antidote.
"Yet, while the uncertainties have been implicit in the 'following the science' mantra, ministers have tended to convey a certain command instead of admitting they are learning as they go along.
"The result has been a confused mess as the anomalies thrown up by measures such as social distancing and masks have demonstrated beyond peradventure that government, national, regional or local, cannot cope with the infinite variety of personal circumstances.
"In the end, only common sense by the public and those administering the rules will get us through it in a reasonable state. The crucial message now should be: take care, get back to work, rescue the economy and save jobs. But would our new televised spokesman be allowed to say it?"
He continues: "Coronavirus, however, is only one subject the proposed new TV figure would have to cope with.
"The media have an unquenchable thirst for stories and, as I know only too well, you may have to cope with anything from the significance of Mrs Thatcher wearing black - a media alert that someone is in for a handbagging - to the intricacies of East-West relations.
"How is a political spokesman (or no doubt preferably a pretty woman) to be armed not merely with knowledge of issues likely to be raised but, just as important, the background to them?
"Don't forget Brexit is still unresolved, Europe and the USA are in a mess. China and Putin's Russia are a serious threat to the world's well-being. And what about all those economic, social and infrastructural problems lying around?"
And Sir Bernard concludes: "My advice is that government spokesmen, however fast on their feet, should not regularly reveal their inevitable ignorance to the nation. It is bad enough ministers being occasionally all over the show."