As a line I love it: “I’ll see half of you next week.”

Miguel Gallardo could deploy it brilliantly in the latest series of Narcos: Mexico. It sounds even more sinister in Spanish: “Veré a la mitad de ustedes la proxima semana.” Such menace – a promise that many won’t make it through the next few days with no shred of remorse nor regret at that prospect.

The real Gallardo – of course – is in prison, serving a 37 year sentence for murder, kidnapping, racketeering and drug smuggling. He holds the dubious distinction of being the jefe de jefes (boss of bosses) of the Mexican drug trade in the 1970s and 1980s. But this was Dominic Cummings – son of a sweet family, raised in Durham, educated at one of the poshest private schools outside London (current fees for day pupils £15,993), a graduate of Oxford University and married to the daughter of a knight who lives in a castle. He named his son after a saint and yet he’s gone out of his way to cultivate a reputation as a powerful, well-placed psychopath, perched next to the prime minister at the heart of British government.

Like Gallardo, our view of Dom C is coloured by a great actor – taller, slimmer and sufficiently mesmerising to immortalise the super-spad on screen. Benedict Cumberbatch made a big effort to get his speech, gait and mannerisms right, but the casting itself blew the prominence of a back room boy out of all proportion.

Not that the self-styled “closest” advisor is a closet advisor these days. Only the PM himself is more photographed, quoted and debated. Cabinet ministers have been encouraged to lie low, avoid flagship news programmes, bury themselves in their red boxes and hand over any positive publicity for their achievements to the PM himself. The closest adviser – however – is omnipresent.

Twentysomethings who can’t really fight back without abandoning their personal political ambitions should not have to pay the price for his narcissistic Narcos delusion

Having spent four years as one of Boris Johnson’s top team at London's City Hall, I know that staying out of the shot can be tricky. Journalists are understandably fascinated when they see a colourful character crossing the threshold of power. A creature such as Cummings is easy copy. But the deal we sign up for as aides is pretty damn obvious: “All glory,” as Boris used to playfully put it, “goes to the fuhrer.”

Most of us in the late 1990s rightly identified Alastair Campbell as one of the most influential people in Britain. Some genuinely believed he was the puppeteer pulling the strings of a shallow, superficial premier, Tony Blair. But even the real-life Malcolm Tucker never sought the limelight for himself. And I’m not surprised that the attention-seeking of Dominic Cummings offends him: “The studied scruffiness, which screams out “please photograph me” every time he walks up Downing Street with his takeaway coffee and his arse hanging out of his trousers.” Campbell credits his killer line to his daughter “[Like] posh kids at university who spend ages in front of the mirror working out how to dress in a way that disguises the fact that their parents are absolutely loaded.”

Campbell could be aggressive. And he lost perspective over the Iraq war that he helped Blair take us into. But over a decade in power there was always more charm than menace. His team loved him, his mission was invariably to articulate what his boss was up to and there was never a personal agenda to distract or dilute.

If he’d ever held a job of comparable seniority outside political circles he’d know that such abuse would get him disciplined or sacked in seconds

It’s hard to imagine Campbell describing the High Speed 2 rail link as a “disaster zone” just days before the prime minister approved it or ostentatiously highlighting the risks of Chinese espionage shortly after his boss dismissed such concerns by embracing the 5G technology of Huawei. With aides like Dom C, who needs an opposition?

On both those big judgement calls – as it turned out – the so-called closest aide was out of sync with the leader and he’d made sure we knew it. That can’t be good.

Then there is the BBC. Cards on the table, I was happily employed there for 18 years and I think the Beeb is one of the best things about Britain. I’d be astonished if the Boris Johnson I knew and worked for wanted to destroy it. The BBC is not faultless and it’s mishandled some big decisions recently, but briefing a serious newspaper that the licence fee would be abolished and the corporation “whacked” was reckless, irresponsible and an act of self-harm for a self-declared one nation government that’s meant to be focused on other things. Having to personally disown the threat – as the PM was forced to do last week – isn’t great.

Even if this government wanted to scrap the BBC – and I don’t think the PM does – it cannot be the priority at this stage. Delivering Brexit, securing trade deals cutting crime, improving infrastructure and the NHS, not to mention tackling floods and the coronavirus won’t be helped by a petty, tribal, unnecessary war with the source of most people’s trusted news and entertainment. Such a battle would further polarise the UK, which the PM pledged to bring together and prove – at the very least – a huge distraction.

So once again, with an aide like that who needs an opposition? Who needs the Labour Party to undermine Conservative morale when an unelected advisor, who boasts of having never been a party member, is gratuitously offensive to many of its senior statesmen and damn right abusive to the young crack troops who devote themselves to promoting its cause?

Special advisors are too easily derided and mocked in a national debate distorted by a weird fascination with fake-tanned, over-exercised, near-naked bodies talking utter rubbish on the most inaptly named Love Island. But they are almost invariably bright, totally loyal and supremely hard working, taking endless bullets for their ministers and the wider team for very little acknowledgment or money. So threatening, mocking and generally making their lives miserable is appalling behaviour by a man who has insisted on being the line-manager for every one of them. If he’d ever held a job of comparable seniority outside political circles he’d know that such behaviour would get him disciplined or sacked in seconds.

‘Really clever people don’t keep telling everyone they are. In fact they are more likely to be embarrassed by the publicity’

Benedict Cumberbatch may relish having better lines in “Dom C: The Sequel”, but twentysomethings who can’t really fight back without abandoning their personal political ambitions should not have to pay the price for his narcissistic Narcos delusion.

We’ll find out soon if his summary sacking of a loyal aide to the last chancellor (himself made an offer he could not accept at the last reshuffle) lands the government with a big bill or Dom C with a heap of tribunal-type trouble. Sonia Khan has rightly challenged the way she was summoned to a meeting, forced to hand over private texts, sacked apparently without the slightest due process and marched off the premises by an armed guard. Shooting your own to show how horrific you could be to your enemies was part of the rule book in Guadalajara but – again – this is Downing Street, the heart of what is meant to be a sophisticated, mature democracy.

I’ve always hated people who are rude or patronising to waiters. Such a petty, nasty thing to do, not least because they can’t fight back without losing their job. Most of us realise that, many of us because we’ve been there, waiting tables ourselves. I’ve long concluded that those who do so have serious status anxiety – and are masking a deep and dangerous insecurity.

“Dom’s ego will be his downfall,” says a true grown-up who’s handled a similar job and remains loyal to the PM. “Really clever people,” she says, “don’t keep telling everyone they are. In fact they are more likely to be embarrassed by the publicity.” The last straw for her was Dom C’s hiring of Andrew Sabisky. That proud “misfit” is not a neuro-scientist nor surgeon, but somehow felt qualified to declare that black people have smaller brains than everyone else. And with no sporting prowess nor distinction of his own, he compared women’s sport to the Paralympics and... enough! "I mean, who would ever think that was a good idea? Only a man whacking the self-destruct button repeatedly, with his head,” says my battle-hardened source.

Ask yourselves would you work for him? Would you hire him? Would his behaviour be tolerated in your school, hospital, regiment, college, company or club?

So where does that leave us?

We’re left with a powerful unelected official cultivating a high profile, disagreeing with the prime minister, undermining the cabinet, picking on special advisors, hiring weirdos who can’t survive a week in public life and providing us all with a detailed running commentary of how wonderful this is all meant to be. Fantastic!

It may all be a selfless, altruistic act of course, a masochistic willingness to take the hit for his boss, time and time again, so that the PM has the space and relative privacy to manoeuvre and – more importantly – to be the “good cop” in their relationship. The lightning rod idea has some merits, but doesn’t explain the policy dissent nor forgive the behaviour.

As the son of a shrink, I’d be the last to deny there’s a touch of genius in our British jefe de jeffes. Twice now he’s identified the dominant psychological dynamic of our age and tapped into it to outmanoeuvre facts, experts and reason. "Take back control” was an irresistible call to arms in the EU referendum and a similar self-instruction to “Get Brexit done” helped crush opponents at the general election. I’m also impressed by the sense of drive and direction, possibility and purpose projected by this government, and assume that much of the credit for that belongs to Dom C.

But ask yourselves: would you work for him? Would you hire him? Would his behaviour be tolerated in your school, hospital, regiment, college, company or club? And if not, how long can he really last in such a pivotal role, more demanding than most, more scrutinised than almost any. The next movie is still being written, but I think we all know how it ends.

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