A series, produced by the prestigious American channel HBO, is dedicated to him. His name always ends up being debated in the Brexit debates in the UK. This is the unknown star of the new government of Boris Johnson. Dominic Cummings, special adviser to the British Prime Minister, would even be the mastermind of the assault carried out since the end of August by the 10 Downing Street against the British Parliament to bring the Brexit to completion on October 31, whatever the cost.

At least that's what media like The Guardian or the BBC suggest. Boris Johnson's decision to impose five weeks of forced "vacations" on parliamentarians to cut the grass of the opposition, or to threaten them with an early election, at least, fits well with the Dominic Cummings style.

Political Attila

This 47-year-old political strategist, who loves to quote Bismarck and is fascinated by the world of the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, has built a solid reputation as a political Attila who will stop at nothing to achieve his ends. His main feat of arms dates back to 2016: he is the man who made triumph the "Leave" in the referendum on the exit of the European Union (EU).

In 2015, he accepts a position that nobody wants: chief strategist of the pro-Brexit camp. "The campaign started with me, a bike and an iPhone, and that's it," likes to remind Dominic Cummings. He then puts his art in the guts, and his foolproof determination in the service of a cause that seemed lost in advance. It also imposes intense rates on its employees, puts them under constant pressure and does not hesitate to take liberties with the facts to achieve its goal. It is he, for example, who is at the origin of the idea to circulate throughout the kingdom a bus on which is inscribed that London pays 350 million pounds per week to the EU, an exaggeration that borders on the outright lie.

It was at this time that Dominic Cummings' trajectory also crossed that of his future boss: Boris Johnson. The former mayor of London, become champion Brexit, will "appropriate all the slogans developed" by the brain of the camp "Leave", noted in 2016 the British newspaper Financial Times.

"Professional psychopath"

But Dominic Cummings was not recruited by pro-Brexit by chance. He had already proved himself an outstanding strategist in leading the campaign against the UK's entry into the Eurozone in the early 2000s and then set out to shape the Conservative Party's political strategy.

He was most of all Michael Gove's advisor between 2010 and 2014, when this other future heavyweight of the pro-Brexit camp was Minister of Education. The brutal methods used by Dominic Cummings to try to reform the British school system in depth have earned him many enmities, both in education and in government. Prime Minister David Cameron at the time even called him a "professional psychopath".

It must be said that Dominic Cummings has never been deprived of insulting or belittling British politicians. In 2014, he compared David Cameron to a "sphinx without enigma", and felt that the then Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, was a "revolting character" solely "obsessed with his image". He even attacked those who might have passed for his comrades in arms: he thus treated the very pro-Brexit deputies of the European Research Group, "useful idiots".

This outspokenness caused him to be sidelined for several years. This did not prevent Dominic Cummings from continuing to water the British political microcosm of his peremptory judgments through his blog. A forum that also allows him to dissert, often very long, on topics as varied as mathematics, space conquest or the culture of Silicon Valley.

Rasputin or Mark Zuckerberg?

But his political allies forgive him his brutal style as long as he wins. And his prowess in the Brexit referendum earned Dominic Cummings a place in the court of great strategists and other shadow advisers. He was compared, in turn, to a modern Rasputin, to Alastair Campbell - the gray eminence of Tony Blair - or to Steve Bannon, one of the main architects of Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 US presidential election. The Washington Post even finds him looking like Mark Zuckerberg for his propensity to "go fast, without fear of breaking things" ("move fast, break things" is one of the main slogans of the founder of Facebook).

It is no wonder that Boris Johnson decided in July to make him his main political advisor. Nor is it surprising that after a month, Dominic Cummings has already become the target of some of his government colleagues who accuse him of having introduced a "reign of terror" in the government, The Guardian says. In particular, he referred the principal collaborator of another minister ... without informing the minister in question.

But above all, his appointment proves that Boris Johnson is ready to clash with Parliament, or with Brussels. Because Dominic Cummings is "a wartime strategist," says John McTernan, a former political advisor to Tony Blair, in the Financial Times. A man who excels when there is a challenge that seems impossible to meet. And Brexit is clearly in this category.