Today's I See You blog has surpassed itself:
"I see you, Dominic Cummings.
I see your contrarian’s face, the contempt practically dripping off you like sweat off a gonad in a sauna as you emerge from your car. You don’t care, do you? The cameras in your face and the morally grandstanding questions are like marshmallows bouncing off a tortoise. You couldn’t give a shit and you just keep crawling forwards. This is all part of the tedious theatre of politics, the endless cycle of outrage and contrition you have no respect for. You won’t be shamed into anything, mainly because the complete loss of shame as an emotion is a convenient side-effect of the humility bypass hardwired into your programming. You won’t be going anywhere unless they physically throw you out and that’s hardly likely, is it? Not when you know where all the bodies are buried.
It’s absolutely no surprise that you considered yourself above the rules. You self-identify as a legendary maverick, mentally chewing on a toothpick, rocking a pair of aviators and popping the collar of the sweet leather jacket in your mind. In your head you’re the outlaw genius with all the answers. Never mind the real world, where most people overcome the impulse to mindlessly buck all convention when they’re just about done with puberty. It’s permanent rebellion for you, with free markets and thousands of excess deaths for everyone else. The rules bend to accommodate Dominic, not the other way around. Everyone else can stay in their lane while you’re happily bombing up the outside of the M1, your wife coughing alongside you.
Anyone doubting the significance of your cog in the Rube Goldberg machine of our current government needs only to look at the humiliating scramble currently taking place to justify your behaviour. An entire nation hasn’t been gaslit this thoroughly since the turn of the industrial revolution. I don’t know what’s less believable; that driving over 200 miles when a member of the household is symptomatic was always within the rules, or that any offspring of Dominic Cummings ever needed active childcare in the first place. With only their dad to go off I’d have thought a heat lamp and the odd cricket would be all that was necessary. As for the man in front of the curtain it’s hardly surprising that Boris Johnson is on your side - he’s been going to extreme lengths to avoid looking after his own children for decades.
There’s one bonus for the government to come out of all this though - you’ve finally found a use for Grant Shapps, who it turns out is just the right size and shape to act as a squidgy, semi-sentient human shield in a press briefing. He’ll soak up any humiliation now and wring it out of his Wiki page later.
What’s truly remarkable is that anyone at all is considered indispensable at this point. We’ve got the second highest death rate in the entire world, all thanks to a pandemic response so cackhanded and full of holes that at times it’s looked like Abu Hamza in an iron maiden. The government haven’t covered themselves in glory so much as rolled around in a wet turd on the grass before looking up at us, tail wagging, somehow still expecting a pat on the head. They should be desperate for the opportunity to slaughter a sacrificial lamb at this point. It couldn't hurt, could it? Even if they accidentally pissed off some ancient and vengeful pagan God we’d probably still end up with a better end result than our current disaster.
If you’re this essential, Dominic Cummings, it begs the question - just how could things possibly get worse with you gone? I can only assume that you’ve been hand-operating Boris Johnson for so long now that there’s no other puppeteer left in the troupe who knows how to wave his hands about and make his mouth move at the same time. You’re so utterly invaluable to this carnival of chancers that they can’t even boot you now to save face while asking Williamson and Patel to show you where their secret tunnel for getting back in is.
There have been thousands of people making incredibly difficult decisions about how to best care for the people they love over the last few months. Families have been unable to sit at deathbeds or attend funerals, grandparents have missed not just birthdays but births themselves, and parents the length and breadth of the nation have made innumerable uncomfortable sacrifices, both personal and financial. That all of their impossible choices should be essentially rendered moot by ministers and advisers who either break the rules or bend them to accommodate their colleagues strikes at the very heart of why we ever accepted such illiberal and draconian measures in the first place.
We accepted lockdown willingly on the grounds that we were supposedly all in this together, bound by a collective responsibility to minimise the damage. You knew all that, and you chose to do whatever you wanted anyway. If you’d genuinely believed you were acting within the rules we wouldn’t be finding out about it now. You’d have written about it, or your wife would have written about it, or you would have informed someone in government at the time rather than retroactively hiding behind Johnson’s own illness.
You were too ill to look after your kids but well enough to drive. It was your only option but your wife's family lives in London. It was an essential trip but it coincided nicely with a family birthday. You followed neither the letter nor the spirit of the law but you don’t care, do you, Dominic Cummings? The plebs should do as you say, not as you do, and even then it wouldn’t hurt if the odd one went even further and didn’t listen to the government slogans. If the Durham police or those bastards in Barnard Castle hadn’t been staying so alert you wouldn’t have got in this much bother in the first place. Best to just call them all liars now and hope all this just goes away.
The scandal continues to bubble on, with some backbench Tories now breaking ranks to call for your departure. It won’t bother you though, will it, Dominic Cummings? You’ve got too many cards up your sleeve, too many aces left to play. Best to just go for a walk and clear your head, your best friend and lapdog lolling around beside you.
I see you, Dominic Cummings, smiling as the dappled sunlight falls upon your face, the moss and grass of the woodland floor springing back from your footsteps as you walk among the flowers. Aren’t the bluebells lovely? This is the fresh new world you wanted to build - all green shoots and new pastures, erupting from the rot of the old one, the man behind you holding open the door for your vision to spring to life.
I see him, the blond mop of his hair trailing in his eyes, head bowed. I see the tears rolling silently down his face as he watches your back, his finger twitching on the trigger. Poor Boris. He has no idea what to do without you to tell him.
I see you bend down to consider the bluebells. Maybe this moment will never end. Maybe he’ll never have to do it.
Maybe he can just stand here forever, buffering and stuttering. Maybe everyone will forget about all this if he just holds on for long enough.
Just look at the flowers, Dominic Cummings.
I see you, Dominic Cummings. I fucking see you."