IN a time of chaos, anything to hang on to is welcome. An unelected fixer, a Special Political Adviser, a spad, is now said to be at the heart of British government, more powerful than anyone around him.
With the blessing of the new prime minister Dominic Cummings has apparently told advisers to all other ministers they are to report to him, not to their ministers.
Something familiar in this, also something cheering. The RHI inquiry here, its report nearing publication at the speed glaciers used to move at, revealed in its public hearings that the real power inside the DUP in Stormont was spad Timmy Johnson.
Senior civil servants were disrespected, ministers undermined. No matter what the RHI report says, the inquiry's revelations have - surely - finished off that Stormont arrogation of power and control.
Since current events at Westminster are moving at a multiple of Stormont's pace, there should be resolution in much shorter order in London. There are multiple combustible egos in this new government.
The elevation of Boris Johnson has brought the old Vote Leave team headed by Cummings into Downing Street, leaving political London, Dublin and some in Brussels wondering as before if these Leavers are for real.
Cummings is supposed to work with very senior minister Michael Gove who as 'Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster' is to chair daily meetings of officials and give orders to ministers.
There is "now a very real prospect of no deal", Gove tells the Sunday Times. Whitehall is being 'retooled', a 'war cabinet' of six headed by Johnson will meet daily.
The combination of control and hectic meetings is clearly meant to close down any back channels to Brussels, as the new team drives full-pelt towards the no deal cliff.
To terrify the EU into abject surrender, or at least a compromise on the backstop; the Leavers' catch-cry from the start, that of course opponents will bow to Britain.
The first blast of the new era is meant to induce shock and awe, and it does.
Jeremy Corbyn is in pitiful shape. Targeting Labour 'Leavers' is under way. One theory is that this lot will go for an election before the October 31 deadline leads to disaster, which will be blamed on Euro refusal to budge.
But Johnson is famously devoted exclusively to himself. The people he installed as a cabinet last week are distinguished mainly by devotion to lobbying for big corporations.
An uninspiring bunch, to put it mildly. They cannot be sure of their prime minister and he almost certainly does not know himself what he will do. Can Cummings retool him?
Before heading for the lesser nations, the new leader whizzed round hotspots; Saturday Manchester, Sunday Birmingham, Scotland yesterday, promising spending all round to the parts that feel neglected by London, and to curiously-named regions here.
But "absolutely" no election before the October deadline for taking "the UK out of the EU, whole and entire"; Mr Johnson, in Birmingham. Not a man whose word is his bond, the "absolutely" did nothing to lessen suspicions.
The DUP must cling to the idea that Vote Leave owes them, though Cummings may not be the type who allows old debts to inhibit him. 'Right-wing Maoists' is a tag he and Gove enjoy, the aim of destroying to re-make usefully scary.
You can see Sammy Wilson relishing that, but Nigel Dodds? Although Dodds worked closest to Cummings on the £435,000 the party helpfully channelled into the Leave campaign's last lavish spending before the 2016 referendum.
What were DUP MPs thinking as they watched the woman leave who made them invaluable and her successor making his debut?
Johnson forgot to lavish any rhetoric on May's "precious union", the DUP's reason for being. Though he has given himself the title of 'minister for the Union'. Is that reassuring?
A snap election, and the DUP's precious votes may be precious no longer.
