Dominic Cummings, a ‘career psychopath’ according to David Cameron, has been appointed as Boris’s adviser in No 10. He masterminded the Leave campaign, was behind the infamous ‘£350 million-a-week for the NHS’ claim on red buses, and the ‘take back control’ catchphrase. He was later found in contempt of Parliament for refusing to answer MPs questions about the campaign and declined to assist the Parliamentary investigation into claims that Cambridge Analytica used illegally harvested Facebook data of millions of users that used to sway the Brexit vote. Sharp tongued, he doesn’t hold back from insulting even his own side. In 2017 he described David Davis, then the Brexit secretary, as ‘thick as mince, lazy as a toad and vain as Narcissus’.
He ought to be a weathervane for what comes next.
Born 25 November 1971 in Durham, he got an Oxford First in Ancient and Modern History, spent three years in Russia on a failed business venture and then moved into politics. He’s regarded as part brilliant part mad and tricky to get along with.
He has an exact, slippery Sun Neptune in Sagittarius in a neurotic opposition to Saturn in Gemini squaring onto a scattered, high-wire Mars in Pisces. Shades of Boris’s focal point Mars in Gemini. It’s not an obvious pairing since Boris’s Saturn, Uranus, Pluto and Mars collide with Dominic’s Mars Sun, Neptune, Saturn. Though Dominic’s Venus Mercury in Sagittarius do chime with Boris’s Gemini Sun Venus. Both are exceptionally fragmented, disorganised and find focus difficult.
Their relationship chart is tricky with a controlling composite Sun Pluto which can be helpful for a joint transformative venture but can also run all too easily into power struggles. There’s also a gritty, bad-tempered composite Mars Saturn conjunction on the apex focal point of a Yod inconjunct Neptune sextile Pluto – that suggests a relationship critical to both lives which will completely alter their destiny – for good or ill. Plus a delusional, head-in-the-clouds Jupiter square Neptune.
Their connection is mightily strained now till late August with tr Pluto square the composite Mars, and on a slide from mid November to mid December which is a time that also looks ropey on Boris’s personal chart.
Cummings’ own chart doesn’t look remotely upbeat at this promotion – if anything he’s in a meltdown panic of bad-temper and anxiety with tr Pluto conjunct his Sun/Mars, his Mars/Neptune and square his Mars/Saturn midpoints. That looks catastrophic. He’s got another exceedingly jangled and worrisome patch mid-December to early February. Not exactly running to plan.
It’s ironic – maybe not – that the Netflix documentary The Great Hack exposing Cambridge Analytica and election manipulation airs tonight. Aaron Banks the chief Leave donor has been trying to get it shut down.