As he is busy applying for any teaching post that might be available, Paul Pennyfeather, the hapless protagonist of Evelyn Waugh’s “Decline and Fall”, is made aware that the agency through which he hopes to find employment classes schools into four grades: “Leading school, first-rate school, good school, and school”. “Frankly”, Pennyfeather is told, “School is pretty bad”.  In the wake of Dominic Cummings’ extraordinary assault on Boris Johnson and the government in which he served, Waugh’s grading scheme for schools may be applied to governments too. For these may also be sorted into grades and since, by Cummings’ own…

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