How to run a government

I’m interested in meetings. How they’re chaired, who decides what, how the time is allocated. As a deputy head, I was famous for running a meeting for senior staff, about “How to run a meeting” - and I don’t apologise for that. Meetings don’t run themselves, and if they’re left to do so without any thought or rational action, those attending will suffer.

So for me the big revelation from Dominic Cummings’ recent outburst was not exactly how incompetent Matt Hancock is, but the brief, vivid sketch of Johnson’s management style:

“He tells rambling stories and jokes, avoids any difficult issues, urging colleagues to ‘take it offline’ before shouting ‘forward to victory!’ doing a thumbs up and pegging it out of the room before anybody can disagree.”

Cummings isn’t the most reliable witness in the world, but in the light of that account I feel a lot clearer about how and why we’ve ended up where we are.