Dominic Cummings notoriously has problems with his eyesight but even he should have seen the writing on the wall.
Ever since his lockdown-busting trip to Barnard Castle the Prime Minister’s top adviser has been living on borrowed time.
He cultivated an image of himself as a strategic genius with a Svengali-like ability to read the public mood.
Much of his reputation rested on his skill at boiling down campaign messages into three words, whether it was “Take Back Control” during the EU referendum or “Get Brexit Done” at last year’s election.
Now his own career can be summed up in three more simple words: “Gone By Christmas.”
As with any salesman who flogs snake oil, you eventually get rumbled.
Cummings, 48, may have been brilliant at campaigning but he was ill-suited to governing.
He brought into Downing Street the pugnacious and abrasive mindset of the Vote Leave team.
His attitude when the Mirror revealed he had breached his own lockdown restrictions was typical of how he conducted himself in power: he knew better than anyone else.
As Guto Harri, Boris Johnson’s former aide, told Sky News, “He was a player on the field who wasn’t scoring any goals but wouldn’t pass the ball to anyone else.”
Cummings was dismissive of MPs – he once described them as not “particularly bright egomaniacs who want to be on TV” - and ruthless about hoarding power.
Many believe he was instrumental in the ousting of a string of senior servants, including the former top mandarin Sir Mark Sedwill.
His ruthless approach was demonstrated when he ordered the sacking of Sajid Javid’s media adviser Sonia Khan, who was marched out of Downing Street under police escort for reportedly talking to opponents of Johnson’s Brexit strategy.
When questioned about it he reportedly said: “If you don’t like how I run things, there’s the door” and said critics could “f*** off”.
It emerged today that Ms Khan had been given a five-figure pay off by the Government.
Cummings preferred to hire “misfits and weirdos”, including an aide who was forced to quit for suggesting black people had lower IQs.
When not waging war with the civil service, he was picking fights with the media, the judiciary and Parliament.
This abrasive style might have been tolerated if it delivered results. But during Cummings’ 15-month tenure Downing Street has lurched from one crisis to the next.
The champion of “superforecasting” was unable to foresee the need to u-turn on free school meals, the wearing of masks, charges for overseas NHS staff, mass testing and the second national lockdown.
While Cummings was dabbling with his pet projects such as defence procurement rules and an algorithm to decide planning decisions, the country was in the grips of the worst health crisis for a century.
A crisis he exacerbated when his breach of the lockdown rules undermined the government’s public health messaging.
Cummings is now departing before Brexit comes into force. He will not be there to account for the disruption that will follow regardless of whether we get a deal.
He is leaving because even the Prime Minister had grown tired of his divisive approach and the damage it has caused to the government’s reputation.
But Mr Johnson cannot wash his hands of what happened.
He brought Cummings, once dubbed a “career psychopath” by David Cameron, into the heart of power and indulged his vendettas, wild-eyed fancies and endless disruption.
Mr Cummings once said “we live in a constant series of gimmicks, cock-ups, and waste”.
These words could be the epitaph for his time in Downing Street.
