Former chief adviser to Boris Johnson Dominic Cummings has claimed that Donald Trump’s presidency has ushered in a new era in American politics.

In a new interview with the Sunday Times, Cummings explained that the “post-New Deal era” was giving way to a “fourth era”. “There have been three basic 70-year eras of the American republic: the founding era, the post-Civil War era, the post-New Deal era,” Cummings said. “With the arrival of Trump, we may be entering a fourth era.”

Cummings, who rose to prominence as a key figure in the Vote Leave campaign and later as Johnson’s chief strategist, described the US President’s start to his second term as a much-needed attempt to overhaul the American political system. “It’s basically all great from my perspective,” Cummings said. “We’ve got a government that’s actually trying to control the government for the first time since FDR”.

The Brexit architect claimed that, like Britain, the US was in need of fundamental reform. “It’s an extremely similar argument to what I’ve been saying about Whitehall,” Cummings noted. “We’re living in this kind of legacy system created by people who are all dead that now rattles around out of control. We have fake elections and fake promises and fake strategies.”

Despite his admiration for Trump’s approach, Cummings acknowledged the challenges of enacting meaningful reform. He drew comparisons to Boris Johnson’s own struggles to implement change in Britain, particularly during the 2020 “Get Brexit Done” campaign. “How much are Trump and his political team prepared to make an effort to change these things and therefore back Elon [Musk] and all the other high-calibre people going in with him?” Cummings asked.

Though he denied being “in cahoots” with Musk in a joint plot to “sabotage British politics”, Cummings expressed support for the Tesla CEO, whose DOGE team has drawn attention for its high-profile attempts to cut waste from the federal bureaucracy. “Can Elon go into an entity, fire more than half the workforce, and radically change how it functions?” asked Cummings. “Of course, he can.”

Cummings’s vision for Britain’s future mirrors the political transformation he sees in the US, where Silicon Valley elites backed Donald Trump to challenge the establishment. “In America, the capable elite said, ‘F*** this, we’re not going to tolerate it any more,’” Cummings said, suggesting a similar shift is necessary in the UK. Calling Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch a “useless dud”, Cummings also questioned whether the insurgent Reform UK party — which is now topping the polls — could evolve into a viable government force by 2028. “Is it a plausible party of government in 2028? Do they want to and can they build and attract elite talent?” he asked.

However, Cummings made it clear he is not inclined to get involved directly in Westminster politics. “Engagement with Westminster is not tempting to me,” he said. “Helping people outside build things is more interesting to me”.