Or should he stay?

Beat your ploughshares into swords (Joel 3:9) 

I have become intrigued by double standards. Yesterday I went on a bike ride. At a junction I swept confidently onto the main road, into a gap too small for a car but fine for a fast-moving bike. As the next car swept by me, leaving hardly enough room for a sneeze, his horn sounded loudly in my ear. It was a Give Way junction, I had checked he had room to pass, I was cycling on the verge and not in his pathway, but he felt aggrieved that I hadn't behaved like a car. He expected me to sit at the junction and wait for him. Double standards, do you see? He passed me like he would a bike, lethally close, but expected me to wait for him like a car.

As I ponder further the Dominic Cummings' affair, I am intrigued by the double standards displayed by Boris. I think there is little doubt that someone less valuable to Boris would have been out on his ear. But for his co-conspirator, Boris is happy to brazen it out. When we start to look for it, we see this principle everywhere. In countries the world over it is one rule for the rich and elite and another for the poor and the outcast. Even so it is pretty shocking to find it in government and even more so in Scripture. 

In one place, Isaiah, God requires swords beaten into ploughshares, in another, Joel, it's ploughshares into swords. One rule for his own people, another rule for everyone else. Another of those contradictions people claim to find in the Bible. Or is it? You see, I'm not so sure, not least because, when you read the text carefully, all those contradictions seem to evaporate away. This one is no exception. In Isaiah, God is promising a new order where peace shall reign, so the swords will be beaten in ploughshares. In Joel, God is challenging his enemies to try and oppose him, with more than a hint of irony, by turning their whole efforts into vain warfare. Do your worst, use even your farmyard implements as weapons, for you'll find it gets you nowhere. My rule of peace will come and soon.

So is it double standards with Boris? It certainly seems that way but I suspect the affair reveals a deeper principle in government, which may be more worrying still. It's a simple one: me and my gang against the rest. The rules of the playground appear to dominate Whitehall and who can be surprised. A leader of Boris's ilk needs his group of supporters around him. Politicians have enough enemies without losing their friends. Do we applaud? Well, no, I don't think so. Are we surprised? No, of course not. But is he right? Does he need Dominic Cummings? I may be wrong but I suspect the answer is Yes. If you want Boris, you get Dominic. Like it or lump it. Or of course vote them out at the earliest opportunity if this is not the way you want government to be run.

As I write, an even more bizarre possibility has been suggested. It's this: the trip was all some kind of front for Cummings' real purpose in Barnard Castle. He went on a secret visit to the head office of GSK to persuade them to give their new COVID-19 vaccine to the UK first. This makes for a wonderful conspiracy theory, and provides a powerful if unlikely explanation for why Boris won't sack him: Dominic Cummings stranglehold on government is complete. Maybe? Maybe not. It's a bit Star Wars for my liking. Whatever the case, it looks like Dominic's staying. For the moment at least.

View from the bike