The loss of Mr Grayling to the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) puts me in mind of the old radio comedy “The Navy Lark” about the hapless crew of the Royal Navy Frigate HMS Troutbridge. In the show Ronnie Barker was the voice of Naval Intelligence and answered the phone with a gormless drawl, “This is intelligence speakin’.”

Mr Graylings involvement in government to date has not been an unqualified success. It is fortunate that the man who gave a contract for boats to a company with no boats was not around at the time of Dunkirk. This is a man who can make a mitigated disaster unmitigated with no appearance of noticing.

He remains a member of the Committee so the actions of Julian Lewis, working with the opposition parties, to take the Chair can only be seen as “damage limitation”. However the whole affair is fascinating as an insight into the approach to government of this administration.

They clearly adhere to the arithmetic, elective dictatorship view of democracy. A view which goes beyond seeing elections as giving the government the right to implement its’ policies within the framework of consent, which includes the rule of law and a whole series of checks and balances. Rather a view, most clearly exhibited by President Trump, that once elected, the whole panoply of state power must bend to the will of the executive.

The Justice and Security Act 2013 states, “A member of the ISC is to be the Chair of the ISC chosen by its members.” (my emphasis) Given it is statutorily given to the members of the Committee to decide who amongst them should be Chair one may assume the intention of the legislators at the time was not to place it within the gift of the Prime Minister.

To try and whip this decision is a clear attempt to undermine the intention of the statute and betrays, at the very least, a nonchalant attitude to the rule of law. To then withdraw the whip from a member of the Committee who had the temerity to get elected within the terms of reference of the Committee and the statute is a cack handed compounding of the offence.

It betrays an obsessive compulsion for control combined with a complete lack of political sensitivity. It has all the hall marks of Prime Minister Johnson’s chief advisor and it is worrying.

Mr Cummings seems to sacrifice politics to efficiency and confuses efficiency with what he wants, when he wants it. Unfortunately, politics is not a science or a game of chess, it is an art. The numbers do not always add up, even when you have a majority, and the chess pieces have minds of their own.

Steering the ship of state cannot be easy. It almost certainly requires constant attention. Attention to the big picture, taking the ship towards its destination, but also the instinctive attention to the details which matter.

This latest fiasco is a spectacular own goal, either of his own making or that of Chief Petty Officer Cummings. Why on earth would you risk political capital in providing Chris Grayling, of all people, with a sinecure which he is ill qualified to fill? He now looks as if he is losing control because he tried to control something he should not have done, what is more it is not even apparent that he needed to.

Worse the machinations look like an attempt to control the committee just at a time when it is about to deal with a report into Russian interference in the last election. A report the PM has been sitting on for months. This inevitably raises questions about whether there is something in the report which justifies the manipulations?

Sub Lieutenant Phillips was an amiable buffon, guiding HMS Troutbridge in to harbour with the technical precision of “Left hand down a bit” but almost always ended up crashing into the harbour wall with an “Ooh nasty!” Sadly it appears the Sub Lieutenant is at the helm again.