In this special two-part interview, Michael Gove and Madeline Grant are joined by Dominic Cummings. After starting his political career at the Department for Education, Dominic is best known as the campaign director of Vote Leave, the chief adviser in Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s premiership, and one of the most influential strategists of modern times.

Whether you consider him a visionary reformer or (as David Cameron once said) a ‘career psychopath’, his ideas – on government, technology, the Blob, education and the future of the right – continue to provoke debate.

In part one, Dominic diagnoses Britain’s institutional decline and takes us inside Whitehall’s ‘heart of darkness’. He explains that ministers have been stripped of real power by lawyers and the Cabinet Office, and how the ‘madness’ of the Human Rights Act has produced chilling outcomes for defence and counter-terrorism. He reflects on the reforms launched after the Conservatives’ 2019 election victory and why they were ultimately abandoned, criticises Johnson’s failure to pursue the mandate he was given, and revisits the government’s handling of Covid.