Sabisky episode exposes tensions at heart of Downing Street

This is a government focussed on the health service, crime and levelling up the economy, according to the Prime Minister last week. Instead, his Number 10 has got itself embroiled in a bizarre row that raises questions about access to power, vetting and the judgment of Boris Johnson’s main adviser, the powerful Dominic Cummings.

The aide at the centre of this weird row was parachuted into Downing Street as a “super forecaster” of geopolitical trends. Andrew Sabisky has now left the service of the government. He said on Twitter last night at 7:40 pm that he had resigned from his role as a contractor for the Prime Minister.

It was revealed on Saturday by Francis Elliott in The Times that Sabisky had been hired by the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings. Sabisky had a history of making controversial remarks. These include suggestions that black people have lower average IQs than white people and that compulsory contraception could help to prevent the danger of “creating a permanent underclass”.

Sabisky has received sympathy online from those who believe he is the latest victim in a long chain of Twitter mobs directed at senior government advisers and others. The commentator Toby Young came to his defence, urging that “The defenestration of people from public life for having said controversial things in the past must stop.”

Others are less convinced that this is a matter of political correctness gone mad so much as an issue of poor vetting from the government. The BBC journalist Andrew Neil asked: “Is this really a free speech issue? Did he not use his free speech to spout bollocks? Free speech must allow bollocks. But doesn’t spouting it disqualify you from 10 Downing (Street)? Is there no vetting process?”

Although Sabisky says that he resigned, Tom Newton-Dunn, Political Editor of The Sun and Harry Yorke in the Telegraph write today that Sabisky might have been pushed before he jumped. They report that despite Sabisky’s public position, he was in fact fired.

Now, Downing Street’s decision to hire Sabisky in the first place has also led to criticisms and questions surrounding Cummings’ judgment. Sabisky is just one of the first of a series of “weirdos” and “misfits” who were parachuted into government to transform the civil service. This row does not bode well for Cummings’ plans to transform how, and by whom, the country is governed

The Prime Minister’s office has been mute about the issue, but Kwasi Kwarteng, the MP for Spelthorne and the Minister for Business, Energy, and Clean Growth, has now spoken out.

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live show this morning, Kwarteng said that Sabisky’s remarks were “racist” and “totally unacceptable”: “The comments were completely reprehensible. They were racist, offensive remarks and he’s now left very quickly and that’s the end of the matter,” he said.

Kwarteng added that it was “unfortunate” that Sabisky was hired in the first place. He remarked of the selection procedures for Downing Street aides: “We should prevent racists from coming into No 10 or wherever he was working, I do think we do need to look at these processes”.

Kwarteng, who outside of parliament has enjoyed a career as an historian of the British Empire and who has degrees from Harvard and Trinity College, Cambridge, will no doubt see disturbing parallels between Sabisky’s racial determinism and the pseudo-scientific racial hierarchies with which many nineteenth-century Europeans were so obsessed.

When he was asked at home this morning whether he regrets hiring Sabisky, Dominic Cummings responded with a reading recommendation: “Read Philip Tetlock’s Superforecasters, instead of political pundits who don’t know what they’re talking about.”

The episode also appears to be causing tension in Downing Street between Johnson and Cummings. Boris relies on Cummings, but there are signs that he is growing concerned over his adviser’s bolder ideas.

The Times this morning splashed on an account of a split on the future of the BBC: “The Prime Minister favours ‘reform rather than revolution,’ and is significantly less gung ho about abandoning the license fee than Cummings…who is said to be ‘ideological’ about the issue.”

All the while, the new Boris government continues to exhaust its energies and expend political capital. Barely seven months has passed, and yet Boris Johnson’s time in Downing Street has already created high profile controversies and destroyed considerable goodwill and alienated parts of the media. There has been the resignation of a Chancellor, the ongoing lobby war with the BBC, and the war of Dominic Cummings against, well, everyone.

These events have brought an end to the Boris honeymoon. It may well be that much of the country is paying little attention now post-election. But it is an odd situation for for the government to find itself in when it hopes to create a sense of optimism about Britain’s future.