Dominic Cummings, the brains behind Brexit, writes:
New blog: results from a deep research project on swing voter attitudes to KS, Kemi, Farage, immigration, NHS, net zero, benefits etc…
Want to know what swing voters think?
* They hate Westminster and both parties more than ever. ‘It’s like they hate us’ is a common view.
*The cost of living and immigration dominate discussion much more than SW1 realises.
* Voters greatly UNDER-estimate the scale of immigration by ~5-30X, contrary to the conventional wisdom. They are already angry about the immigration farce of Tories and Labour before they are given the real numbers. So there is huge scope for *much greater hatred for the old parties* and much more support for *much tougher action*. Millions of LAB voters want much tougher action on immigration than Tories like Gawke and Barwell.
*The fact that the millions are mainly legal not illegal is further terrible news for both old parties and makes voters hate them more. Voters want MUCH tougher rules on ‘can they support themselves financially’, use of NHS, and blocking/deporting of violent criminals. Dinghy farce stopped.
* Voters are much more sceptical of Net Zero than 5 years ago. Showing them PRC emissions helps win the argument for a shift of policy they support.
*Voters are much more sceptical that more money will help the NHS than in decades – maybe since the start of the NHS. They want to hear new ideas but hear nothing from the old system.
*They HATE HATE HATE the utility companies – the hate is the same across CON/LAB/REF etc. This is an open goal for all political entrepreneurs.
*Voters are much more angry about benefit scams than MPs of any party. This issue seems less polarised than immigration.
*Voters were deeply hostile to Starmer BEFORE the Epstein debacle. There is zero prospect of this turning around given KS’s skills and temperament. (The conventional wisdom from the likes of the Institute for Govt and FT was KS is ‘a serious person’ who will ‘bring stability’. The system is now disowning KS but he was their boy.)
*Voters have few views on Kemi because they ignore the Tories because ‘they’re just not relevant any more’. They know nothing she’s said or done. ‘Useless but irrelevant’.
* Voters want ‘a team and a plan’ from Farage but fear he won’t give them it and fear another bout of chaos making the cost of living nightmare even worse.
*The aesthetics of right wing videos tend to be bad for persuasion. Aesthetics polarise emotionally even when people agree on facts/arguments re immigration etc.
*A big chunk of the SW1 NPC class has radicalised so much on immigration they can’t see sense and will keep sabotaging themselves. E.g Sam Freedman says that it’s HARDER for Britain to stop the dinghies crossing the Channel than for America to control the 2,000 mile southern land border! The NPCs will generate any degree of nonsense necessary to avoid confronting reality on immigration. They have radicalised even more since 2016 when their delusions sank them in the referendum.
*This should not surprise you — this network decided they understand managing tech companies better than the guy who built SpaceX and spent 3 years saying X was about to collapse before self-cancelling to Bluesky where they’ve driven themselves mental.
*This is not a network that will update accurately in response to voters. Much of SW1 will continue radicalising Left and supporting the continuation of how SW1 works as the voters hate it, and them, more and more and more.
*Like the Democrats doing things which gave Trump the White House, this NPC network is making it much easier for Farage to become PM, even though that is the thing they want to avoid most.
*The left who think they should copy Mamdani will also self-sabotage.
*The elite fragmentation, radicalisation, OODA-loop-as-denial-of-service attack, and pathological politics will continue.
*Chances of financial crisis and blood on the streets go up every month.
*What LAB MPs should do is pick the person with sensible priorities who is the best suited to controlling a pathological Whitehall and getting things done. They shd optimise for good government, a No10 which is NOT Media Entertainment Service. They shd not think first of polls and ‘communication’ (which the old parties can’t do). The only path to partly averting the debacle of Starmer is to orient towards the voters and *change Whitehall to deliver those priorities*. But this won’t happen! Labour like Tories *prefer to lose* than to have rows at dinner parties about firing officials and improving the management. More likely is the Trolley>Truss show — meltdown then double meltdown with Miliband/Rayner.
*Voters want ‘a new team and a detailed plan’ and a leader who can stick to core priorities particularly cost of living, immigration, and NHS. Neither LAB nor CON can do this. Farage says he will but will he? If Reform is essentially just NF + Tory dregs, then we’re heading for either a Reform clownshow or a red-green-yellow-troon-loon-ScotNat-Hamas coalition clownshow… Or entrepreneurs create the thing voters want and take votes from everybody!
*Everybody Reform is asking for money from shd ask: ‘what’s your recruitment plan for actual serious people who represent the best of the country and have a record of building things?’
Gemini says: Dominic Cummings’ blog post is a forensic map of the declining legitimacy of the UK’s managerial class. By applying your favorite tools, we can see how he identifies a profound jurisdictional collapse and the failure of the “Westminster clerisy” to maintain its authoritative closure.
1. Alliance Theory: The Great Defection
Cummings identifies a massive fracture in the British social geometry. The “old parties” (Tories and Labour) have defected from the median voter to form a self-referential NPC network centered in SW1.
The Sucker’s Game: Voters now view the old parties with active hatred, feeling that “it’s like they hate us.” This is a signal that the public has emotionally exited the legitimacy system because loyalty to the state has become a “sucker’s game” where law-abiding citizens pay for benefit scams and utility failure while the elite alliance protects itself.
A Rival Focal Point: The fact that voters underestimate immigration by 5–30X creates a hard signal for a political entrepreneur. Cummings argues that if the real numbers are exposed, it will trigger a “much greater hatred” that could recruit millions out of elite moral jurisdiction and toward a new coalition centered on “tough action” and “financial self-sufficiency.”
2. Turner: The Failure of Administrative Expertise
Cummings’ analysis of the “SW1 NPC class” is a textbook study of authoritative closure turning into a “denial-of-service attack” on reality.
Expertise Denial: He mocks the “serious people” from the Institute for Govt and the FT who claimed Keir Starmer would bring stability. Their expertise is exposed as a mere status performance that failed to account for Starmer’s temperament or the voters’ pre-existing hostility.
The Monopoly under Siege: By radicalizing on immigration and making “nonsense” claims—like the idea that the Channel is harder to secure than the 2,000-mile U.S. border—the clerisy has lost its liberal property over the truth. When the expert network decides they understand tech better than the person who built SpaceX, they lose their right to explain reality to a public that sees the “mess” of the utilities and the NHS daily.
3. Pinsof: Aesthetic Polarization and Status Attacks
Cummings notes that the aesthetics of right-wing signaling often fail because they select for “outrage performers” rather than “serious people.”
Prestige Realism: He identifies an “open goal” in the universal hatred for utility companies. A political entrepreneur who can fix tangible problems like the cost of living and the NHS would flip the prestige hierarchy.
The Trap of the “Tory Dregs”: He warns that if Reform UK is just Nigel Farage and “Tory dregs,” it remains a “protest identity” rather than a “governing replacement.” To win, they must recruit people who have “a record of building things,” moving from “vibes” to operational wins that elites cannot mock as “low-status.”
4. Alexander: The Desacralization of the “Serious Person”
The blog post acts as a desacralization ritual for Keir Starmer and the Westminster system.
Symbolic Contamination: Starmer is no longer seen as a “sacred protector” of stability but as a “polluted” figure, especially after the Epstein debacle. Cummings frames the entire NPC network as “mental,” driving themselves into a Bluesky echo chamber that is “self-cancelling” from reality.
Sacred Objects in Decay: The NHS, once the most sacred object in British life, is losing its status. Voters are now skeptical that more money will help, signaling a procedural collapse. Cummings suggests that the only path to safety is to “change Whitehall to deliver,” but the elite alliance prefers to “lose at dinner parties” than to perform the necessary “purification” of firing incompetent officials.
Cummings’ “deep research” suggests that the UK is in a “Trolley > Truss” meltdown phase where the sanctity of process is no longer enough to manage the “blood on the streets” reality of institutional failure. The system is “disowning” its own boy, Starmer, but it cannot yet imagine a replacement that isn’t a “clownshow.”
Dominic Cummings’ insistence on “a team and a plan” is the practical application of building an inner ring to replace a failing managerial cartel. He argues that voters are no longer moved by the “Media Entertainment Service” of traditional politics and instead crave a governing replacement that can master the “profane” machinery of the state.
1. Alliance Theory: The Inner Ring vs. The NPC Network
Cummings’ “team” is the structural equivalent of an inner ring composed of “actual serious people” who have a record of building things.
The current Westminster alliance is an NPC network that prioritizes “rows at dinner parties” over “firing officials.” By calling for a team that represents the “best of the country,” Cummings is attempting to peel off a serious faction of the elite to join a new coalition. This inner ring serves as a replacement elite pipeline, ensuring that if a movement like Reform or a new “entrepreneurial” party takes power, it does not collapse into a “clownshow” due to a lack of administrative talent.
2. Pinsof: Selecting for Competence over Outrage
Cummings identifies a critical status realism problem: right-wing movements often fail because they select for “outrage performers” whose aesthetics polarize even those who agree with them.
His “plan” is an attempt to shift the movement from vibes to operational wins. By focusing on cost of living, immigration, and the NHS, he selects for “unsexy” priorities that require high-status competence. This creates parallel prestige; a team that can actually “change Whitehall to deliver” earns a form of legitimacy that the “useless but irrelevant” Tory dregs cannot touch. It moves the movement away from the signaling trap of vulgarity and toward the “dignity” of a government-in-waiting.
3. Turner: Expertise Capture through “No10 Mastery”
Cummings does not advocate for the denial of expertise; he advocates for the capture of expertise.
His plan involves a “No10 which is NOT a Media Entertainment Service,” focusing instead on the technical mastery of the “pathological Whitehall” system. This is an attempt to puncture the authoritative closure of the permanent civil service. By staffing an office with people who understand “tech companies” and “building things,” the counter-elite coalition creates its own rival expert institution. This ensures that when the government gets technical, the counter-elite does not lose jurisdiction to the “NPCs” who “generate any degree of nonsense necessary to avoid confronting reality.”
4. Alexander: Ritual Discipline and the “Responsible Script”
The “detailed plan” acts as a responsible script that provides the movement with ritual discipline.
Cummings argues that the old parties “prefer to lose” than to engage in the “purification” of radical management reform. A team that arrives with a plan for the NHS and immigration performs a ritual of re-sacralization. They frame themselves as the “sacred protectors” of the public’s most basic needs, making the NPC network’s “meltdown” look like the true “profane” chaos. By being “crisis ready” with a plan that avoids “speech policing” and “discretionary surveillance,” the counter-elite coalition occupies the moral high ground during a “financial crisis” or “blood on the streets” scenario.
Ultimately, Cummings is arguing that the sanctity of process in Westminster is a hollow shell. The only way to avoid a “clownshow” is to build a coalition that prioritizes jurisdiction over messaging.
Dominic Cummings identifies the universal hatred of utility companies as a “profane” focal point that can be used to puncture the state’s authoritative closure and build a governing counter-elite. By focusing on tangible, high-salience failures like rising bills and water quality, a political entrepreneur can force “Tier 2” financial and utility regulators into a state of structural hesitation.
1. Alliance Theory: The “Strange Bedfellows” of Utility Hatred
Hatred for utility companies is one of the few issues that cuts across the entire political spectrum, unifying the “strange bedfellows” of the suburban left and the populist right.
Cummings views this as an “open goal” for a counter-elite alliance because it targets a sector where the elite’s adaptive deception—the claim that privatized monopolies provide efficiency—is most visible. By campaigning against “utility scams,” a movement can recruit voters who would otherwise be repelled by “clean” elite signaling. This coordination creates a hard signal of common interest that bypasses the “NPC network” in Westminster or Canberra, forcing regulators to choose between protecting their “clerical” status and addressing the public’s profane financial reality.
2. Turner: Challenging Monopoly Expertise in Regulation
Dominic Cummings argues that the current regulatory system is an authoritative closure where “bean-counters and financiers” protect their own status rather than public credit.
By attacking utility regulators, a counter-elite movement challenges the liberal property of expertise. Cummings suggests that a “team” with actual experience in “building things” can expose the “house view” of regulators as a form of “institutionalized incompetence.” This strategy involves creating rival expert institutions that can “short” the official delivery timetables of major infrastructure projects, revealing that the “experts” are not actually interested in being right. This punctures the monopoly on reality and grants the counter-elite the right to explain the “mess” of the utilities in terms the public understands.
3. Pinsof: Flipping the Prestige Hierarchy
Elite moral signaling often frames utility regulation as a complex, technocratic matter that is “too difficult” for the profane public to judge. Cummings flips this prestige hierarchy by framing the elite’s “technocratic caution” as a form of cowardice or self-dealing.
A successful counter-elite uses the status attack of mocking utility “scams” to make the current managerial class look “low-status” and “irrelevant.” By rewarding competence and operational wins at the local council level—such as successfully fighting a utility rate hike—the movement builds parallel prestige. It selects for people who represent the “best of the country” rather than “Tory dregs,” making the elite’s “refinement” look like a fraud that facilitates the hollowing out of public services.
4. Alexander: The Ritual of “Public Service” Purification
The universal hatred of utilities provides the perfect symbolic contaminant for a ritual of re-sacralization.
Cummings suggests that a governing replacement must act as a “sacred protector” of the public against “blood-sucking” utilities. This performing of a “generalization of consciousness” turns the “bland” administrative process of regulation into a high-stakes arena of moral discipline. By being “crisis ready” with a plan to fire officials and overhaul the management of these companies, the counter-elite performs a “purification” of the state. This makes any attempt by the “NPC network” to preserve the status quo look like a defense of “profane” corruption rather than a commitment to “social cohesion.”
Ultimately, Cummings is using the “utility goal” to demonstrate that jurisdiction rests on outcomes, not messaging. A team that can fix the “profane” reality of a utility bill earns the right to define the “sacred” reality of the state.
1. Alliance Theory: The Coordination of the “NPC Network”
Alliance Theory posits that political and moral beliefs are coordinated to signal and protect the status of an alliance. In this framework, the “SW1 NPC class” is not a random collection of individuals but a managerial caste that maintains its coalition by policing narratives.
Coalition Self-Defense: The rejection of outside plans or talent is framed as an immune response; any attempt to import a new “team and a plan” is rejected like a pathogen to protect existing coalition boundaries.
The Signaling Trap of Underestimated Immigration: If voters significantly underestimate immigration scales, the sudden exposure of real numbers acts as a “hard signal” that can shatter the existing alliance’s legitimacy and recruit millions into a rival counter-elite coalition.
Wedge Politics and Factionalism: Treating the managerial caste as a monolith is an strategic error; coalitions are actually fractured between those who want legal constraints and those who want to break them, creating opportunities for “wedge politics”.
2. Turner: The Authoritative Closure of Monopoly Expertise
Stephen Turner’s thesis on expertise explains how institutional managers maintain a “liberal property” over the truth through authoritative closure.
Management of Reality: The legitimacy of experts is built on being managers of reality; therefore, they cannot admit failure. Instead, they shift blame to “disinformation” or “voters” and demand more power to “restore trust”.
Administrative Lawfare: Bureaus can wait out weak, fast-churning politicians because they possess managerial competence and long-term coercive authority.
Counter-Expertise: An insurgent coalition cannot defeat expertise by mocking it; it must develop an “alternative authority stack” of policy shops and auditing groups to outperform the monopoly.
3. Pinsof: Status Warfare and Aesthetic Signaling
David Pinsof’s framework suggests that social signals are often adaptive deceptions meant to protect status.
Status Labels as Censorship: Terms like “conspiracy theory” function as status labels to make certain claims socially expensive to repeat, regardless of their factual accuracy.
The Aesthetic Mismatch: Persuasion is driven by “vibe” and “prestige realism”. If populist videos feel low-status or “angry,” they repel persuadables even if the underlying policy is popular.
High-Status Wrappers: A successful counter-elite must build a “high-status wrapper” around low-trust demands to bypass the “Fox gnome problem” of appearing insecure or amateurish.
4. Alexander: Cultural Performance and Ritual Protection
Jeffrey Alexander’s cultural sociology explains how societies use rituals and “pollution language” to define the sacred and the profane.
War Rituals: Describing the ruling coalition as “pathological” or “decadent” is a war ritual that restores moral order for the audience but triggers premature elite consolidation by making the outsiders appear as a regime threat.
The Sacred Protection of Cohesion: Following shocks, the elite response is to intensify “sacred protection” rituals, such as commissions focused on “social cohesion” and “hate speech,” which act as symbolic contaminants to be ritually expelled.
To succeed, a counter-elite coalition must move beyond a “protest identity” and build a governing replacement. This requires a bench of serious operators who can survive “lawfare” and a disciplined aesthetic that signals competence and steadiness. The goal is to reach the “capacity threshold” before triggering “elite consolidation,” ensuring that when a shock occurs, the movement is legible as a “sacred protector” rather than a “resentful destroyer”.
ChatGPT says: He’s describing a legitimacy crisis as an alliance mismatch. Voters are the productive majority whose consent is no longer being purchased. SW1 is a managerial caste that keeps its coalition together by policing narratives, not by solving problems.
Key move. He frames politics as immune response. Any attempt to import “plan plus detail plus talent plus campaign” gets rejected like a pathogen. That is an important claim because it explains why “obvious fixes” never happen. It is not technical difficulty. It is coalition self defense.
He also maps a classic failure mode for populists. If you force the system to choose between reform and consolidation, it consolidates. That’s why he predicts more censorship, more trust restoration rituals, more “the problem is the voters” talk. That’s elite consolidation as counter attack.
Where his Alliance Theory gets sloppy is the way he bundles everything into one villain. “SW1” is real as a social world, but he uses it as a single organism with one mind. That is persuasive writing but it can mislead strategy. Coalitions are fractured. Some factions want immigration high. Some want it lower but cannot say so. Some want to preserve legal constraints. Some want to break them. Treating them as a monolith can cause missed opportunities for wedge politics.
Pinsof lens
A lot of this is status warfare disguised as epistemology.
“Conspiracy theory” is a status label. Its function is to make certain claims socially expensive to repeat. He is right about the mechanism. Even when an alleged fact turns out to be true, the label did its job in the moment.
He also admits the key temptation in political research. Researchers often do it to produce justification, curry favor, or get promoted. That is a Pinsof tell. He’s signaling he’s not doing that. Fine. But he then uses his own “deep market research” as an authority anchor. He becomes the rival priest.
His rhetoric is heavy with moral contempt. “NPCs,” “mentally impaired hobbit,” “nutjobs,” “duds.” That kind of contempt bonds an in group. It also narrows the coalition. It makes it harder for fence sitters to join without feeling they are joining a faction that hates them.
His most interesting Pinsof point is aesthetics. He is saying persuasion is not just information. It’s vibe. If right wing videos feel low status, angry, amateur, they repel persuadables even when the policy target is popular. That’s real. It is the Fox gnome problem applied to politics. The minute you explain your gnome is ironic, you’ve already revealed insecurity.
Turner critique of expertise
He is attacking the credibility monopoly of institutional expertise.
The pattern he’s naming is that experts and media cannot admit failure because their legitimacy is built on being managers of reality. So they shift blame to voters, disinformation, foreigners, and then demand more power to “restore trust.”
This is the strongest part of his post. It’s a textbook description of institutional self preservation.
But he also makes a sweeping competence claim. “Stopping the boats is operational childsplay, doable in days.” Maybe. Maybe not. The Turner lens forces you to ask. Is this a technical claim or a political claim. If it’s technical, show the plan and constraints. If it’s political, admit that and say so.
He also leans hard on the idea that bureaucracies can ignore politicians because modern politicians are weak and churn quickly. That rings true as an incentive story. It also implies that any outsider coalition must arrive with managerial competence and coercive authority. Otherwise the state will simply wait you out.
Jeffrey Alexander cultural performance
This is written as a war ritual, not as a memo.
He uses pollution language constantly. SW1 is decadent, deluded, radicalised, document burning, incinerating, pathological. Outsiders are the people with reality. That kind of narrative is powerful because it restores moral order for the audience.
It also triggers the exact dynamic you asked about earlier. Premature elite consolidation. If you describe the ruling coalition as evil, it stops treating you as loyal opposition and starts treating you as a regime threat.
The key consequence is that the “sacred protection” rituals intensify.
More inquiries and commissions framed around cohesion.
More hate speech focus.
More narrative enforcement.
More delegitimization of dissidents.
This is why insurgents often win attention and lose power.
Your add on
Contrast with populist moral signaling and why elites reject it
Elite moral signaling is procedural and sanitizing. It produces roles, committees, standards, funding streams, and a public performance of care. It keeps the same people in charge.
Populist moral signaling is accusatory and punitive. It demands naming, shame, enforcement, exclusion, punishment. It threatens the ruling coalition’s moral legitimacy and its jobs. So elites call it racist, fascist, conspiracy, disinformation, hate. Those are not just moral judgments. They are coalition boundary tools.
What I buy and what I don’t
I buy his core loop.
Voters demand change.
Insiders reframe the demand as pathology.
Insiders demand more authority.
Outsiders fail to coordinate.
Loop repeats.
I buy his note that voters underestimating immigration is politically explosive. If the numbers are correct, the shock effect is real.
I do not buy his repeated insistence that the solution is easy and only blocked by legal barriers, or that “a competent campaign” is the primary missing ingredient. Campaigns matter, but governance is where insurgencies go to die. If you cannot recruit and protect a competent governing cadre, you will either be absorbed or you will collapse.
A more useful frame for your project
Populism fails when it maximizes outrage before it builds capacity.
It becomes a mood, not an organization.
That mood scares insiders into unity.
Then the state tightens.
Then the populists either radicalize further or splinter.
A successful counter elite coalition needs four things at once.
A credible story of national repair that feels morally clean to ordinary people.
A bench of serious operators who can govern and survive lawfare.
A wedge strategy that splits insiders, not just insults them.
A disciplined aesthetic that signals competence and steadiness.
Reusable model
Actors
Populist bloc
A mass coalition driven by grievance, status loss, and distrust
Insider bloc
The professional managerial layer plus aligned institutions, media, courts, regulators, universities, major corporations
Broker elites
People with money, platforms, and operational talent who can defect from insiders and fund build outs
Security legal complex
Agencies, prosecutors, compliance systems, and NGO lawfare capacity that can raise the cost of dissent
Key thresholds
Elite consolidation threshold
How threatened insiders feel. When crossed, they stop competing with each other and unite to crush the challenger
Populist capacity threshold
How much real capability the insurgents have. Money, staff, candidate quality, governance plan, legal defense, media discipline
Legibility threshold
How “respectable” the insurgent looks to swing publics. Aesthetics, tone, professional competence, scandal control
Lawfare threshold
How easily institutions can incapacitate leaders through investigations, deplatforming, bank derisking, civil suits, licensing, immigration status, etc
Cycle
Trigger
Shock plus symbol. Crime, economic squeeze, migration surge, humiliating foreign policy failure, institutional scandal
Populist ignition
High moral heat, low coordination. Viral messaging, rallies, outsider media, distrust spikes
Insider framing
Alexander lens. Convert the trigger into a moral drama where the sacred is “cohesion” and the profane is “hate, disinfo, extremism”
Turner lens. Reassert the monopoly on seriousness, “trust the experts,” “complex problem”
Pinsof lens. Status enforcement via labels. Racist, conspiracy, extremist, misinformation
Premature consolidation test
If populists spike heat without building capacity, insiders unify
Party leaderships converge
Media harmonizes
Courts and regulators tighten
Platforms change rules
Funding gets squeezed
Populist bifurcation
Path A. Rage spiral
More provocation, more purges, more “owning the libs,” coalition shrinks, consolidation intensifies
Path B. Capacity build
Lower heat, higher competence, broaden appeal, split insiders, survive lawfare
Regime outcome
Absorption
Insiders steal the issue rhetorically, keep control
Suppression
Legal, financial, and reputational incapacitation
Replacement
Counter elite coalition takes power and governs
Stalemate
Chronic instability, rotating clowns, worsening legitimacy
Failure modes for populists
Heat first strategy
Maximizes attention, triggers consolidation before capacity exists
Aesthetic mismatch
Low status vibe signals danger even to sympathetic swing voters
Purity politics
Narrows coalition and makes infiltration easy
No governing bench
Even if you win, you cannot run the machine. Bureaucracy waits you out
Scandal magnetism
Personal chaos becomes the story and burns legitimacy
No lawfare shield
Leaders get tied up, banked out, platformed out, immigration status attacked, or financially exhausted
What a successful counter elite coalition needs
Alliance Theory
A bridging coalition that combines majority voters with defecting elites and a credible governing class. You need internal discipline and a shared map of enemies and priorities
Pinsof
Status strategy. You must look competent and calm. You must reduce the pleasure insiders get from calling you gross
Build a high status wrapper around low trust demands
Turner
An alternative authority stack
Shadow institutions. Policy shops, legal defense, data credibility, operational competence
You do not defeat expertise by mocking it. You defeat it by outperforming it
Alexander
A cleaner sacred story than “revenge”
Order, fairness, protection, competence, dignity
Your rituals must signal restraint and legitimacy, not bloodlust
Now apply to the US vs Australia vs UK
United States
Why insurgents can win
Federal structure and elected prosecutors and judges create multiple power centers. You can win some nodes while losing others
A big private donor and platform class exists and can defect at scale. Broker elites matter more in the US
Two party primaries allow capture from inside. You can take over one party rather than build a third
Speech protections are stronger. The legibility threshold is more forgiving
Media fragmentation is higher. You can route around gatekeepers
Why governance is still hard
The lawfare threshold is high. Financial and legal pressure can be intense
Bureaucratic resistance is real
Coalition heterogeneity is huge. Populism is a bundle, not a single program
Pattern
Populists in the US can take power before they have full institutional replacement capacity, then govern in permanent conflict
United Kingdom
Why insurgents struggle
Centralized state and party control. Few independent nodes to capture
Media and civil service ecosystems are tightly interwoven with elite social life
Lawfare and “process governance” are strong. Courts, regulators, HR and compliance can choke action
Third party breakthroughs face electoral structure barriers
Elite consolidation threshold is low. Insiders unify fast because the system is small and social sanctions bite hard
What Cummings is describing
High voter anger plus low outsider coordination plus a closed governing class
His doomloop is real under this model. Lots of heat, repeated collapses, little capacity build
Pattern
UK insurgencies either get absorbed into the Tory Labour machine or become protest brands that trigger consolidation and then stall
Australia
Why outcomes diverge from both
Compulsory voting changes incentives. Governments must speak to the median, not just mobilize a base
Preferential voting helps minor parties exist, but it also channels them into second preference bargaining rather than takeover
Australian political culture has a stronger “managerial consensus” reflex in crises. People often trade liberty for order more readily than Americans
Defamation and speech norms are tighter than the US, making narrative policing easier
State capacity for administrative control is relatively strong, and stigma mechanisms work well
Why Australia can act decisively sometimes
When the legitimacy script aligns, authorities can move fast and the public accepts it
Australia can do “hard enforcement” when the moral story is clean and the target is clearly villainous
Why Australia can also drift into “cohesion and speech” solutions
Because the elite sacred story is protection through management. That story is culturally compatible, especially after mass casualty shocks
So commissions and cohesion frames can expand surveillance and speech control without broad backlash
One Nation under this model
To take power, it must pass the capacity threshold without spiking elite consolidation too early
That means.
Recruit credible candidates
Control aesthetics
Build a “clean protection” story
Win preferences and split the Liberal National coalition
Exploit a competence crisis where mainstream parties look visibly unable to govern
Avoid scandal and avoid being framed as socially polluting
Quick scenarios
US
Replacement is possible because broker elites defect, a party is captured, and institutional conflict is tolerated
UK
Replacement is unlikely without a major elite split plus a new institutional vehicle plus electoral reform or a catastrophic failure that breaks party discipline
Australia
Replacement is possible but more likely via incremental capture and coalition bargaining, unless a large legitimacy shock breaks the managerial consensus
