Its not subtle though, its obvious- everything up to now is not his fault, thats the message & just like was called out on here someone will get thrown under a bus. Its hard to get wound up over at this stage, because thats just "politics" & gameplaying, you'd see it in every walk of life where someone is trying to absolve themselves of responsibility, how many times have you seen a manager say that he "inherited a weak group" and all that stuff even though they've been in charge ages?
This is why Starmer needs to do something (anything?), Cummings is already yesterday's news after being the devil incarnate a week ago- just another example of how he is up against a powerhouse of a machine that- whether you like it or not- is massively efficient and is going to trample all over him unless he seriously starts understanding just what it is he is up against.