Read: Why Britain Brexited

At the heart of the row is the idea set out by Buffett in 1989, that it matters not the “venality or stupidity” of the government minister or civil servant in question (depending on your view of who is in the right), but the hardwiring of the government machine itself. In Cummings’s view, the Civil Service, like every other government bureaucracy, is unable to shake Buffett’s institutional imperative toward inaction, time-wasting, false certainty, and mindless imitation. The machine, Cummings believes, is unable to bring about the kind of change voters want—therefore, the only way to change the outcomes that voters dislike is to change the system. Regardless of who behaved badly in the dispute between Patel and her senior civil servant, this clash of ideas is the key underlying tension.

Cummings’s perspective is best understood not through a traditional left-wing or right-wing political prism, but philosophically. It is revolutionary in nature, seeking systemic change, not just policy reform, and means that individual bust-ups are best understood not on their specific merits alone, but as part of a wider battle over the nature of government itself.

To better understand this clash, it is instructive to return to Cummings’s writings on previous British governments that have found themselves frustrated by the small-c conservative nature of the Civil Service. Both Tony Blair and David Cameron, for instance, sought ways to more efficiently control the machine, to shake it to life to produce the outcomes that the government wanted. Blair chose to centralize and impose targets; Cameron criticized this approach from opposition, only to imitate it in power.

After a crisis following the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease early in his first government, Blair discovered “the wonders of Cobra,” Cummings writes, referring to the U.K.’s disaster-response system, named after the chamber in which it is held—Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. The military response to the crisis showed Blair what could be achieved through command and control, and when further crises emerged, Blair turned to Cobra. Today, Cobra is the go-to response taken by prime ministers when a crisis occurs. Johnson himself was seen to take control of the growing concern over the new coronavirus only when he convened his first Cobra meeting on the matter on Monday.

For Cummings, though, the reliance on Cobra shows not a system working but “a symptom of Whitehall’s profound dysfunction.” The problem, in his view, is the very thing the Civil Service is most proud of: its apolitical permanence. The Civil Service’s defenders say this is what makes it the best in the world, producing “Rolls Royce” diplomats and officials who are experts in their field; free from short-term political pressures; able to give honest, impartial advice; rounded by experience across government. Cummings counters that this is exactly what is wrong with the Civil Service, entrenching its destructive imperative to preserve the status quo, unable to imagine an alternative to the way it works, wasteful of time and resources, and ultimately incapable of adapting to sudden change it never foresees—Brexit chief among them.