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Robert Colvile: No 10 has started a petrol fight with an arsonist. Did no one tell the PM he would get burnt?

The Sunday Times

What were they thinking? It’s the question that’s flying around Westminster’s WhatsApp groups. Yes, the government was bruised and abraded by a stream of high-level leaks. But the decision to pin the blame on Dominic Cummings — including briefings to newspaper editors from the prime minister himself — was a supreme act of folly. It’s the first rule of politics: never start a petrol fight with an arsonist.

Anyone who was surprised by Cummings’s brutal blog post on Friday has not been paying attention. This is the former director of strategy for Iain Duncan Smith who wrote an article after quitting, declaring: “Mr Duncan Smith is incompetent, would be a worse prime minister than Tony Blair, and must be replaced.” (It got worse from there.)