Dominic Cummings claims he considered a COUP to get rid of Boris Johnson
‘The sooner he goes the better. For sure’: Dominic Cummings claims he considered a COUP to get rid of Boris Johnson just weeks after massive 2019 election win because PM had ‘no plan to govern and Carrie wanted to pull his strings’
- PM’s former chief aide unleashed his latest blizzard of complaints about old boss
- He attacked him over his fitness to lead, his Covid policy, his wife Carrie’s power
- He claimed that Johnson admitted to him it was ‘ludicrous’ he was Prime Minister
Dominic Cummings has savaged Boris Johnson again during an hour-long bombshell interview.
The PM’s former chief aide unleashed his latest blizzard of complaints about his old boss during a chat with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg tonight.
He attacked him over his fitness to lead, his Covid policy, his wife Carrie and claimed he could have harmed the Queen by visiting at the start of the pandemic.
The 49-year-old claimed Mr Johnson admitted to him it was ‘ludicrous’ he had made it to the most powerful position in the country.
He also said the PM still considers the Daily Telegraph – which he used to write a £275,000-a-year column for – as his ‘real boss’.
Mr Cummings also blasted the power Carrie has over the PM – who he lost a power struggle to last year – and said she wanted to ‘appoint clowns to certain key jobs’.
Meanwhile he took aim at the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and slammed it as ‘like a disaster movie’.
The Oxford-educated former aide claimed Mr Johnson wanted to visit the Queen at the start of the pandemic but he talked him out of it because it could kill her.
Despite the vicious attacks throughout the programme – called Dominic Cummings: The Interview – he said he was not speaking out for revenge.
He claimed he wanted people to think about how the country was governed and if power is distributed in the right way.
In an interview with the BBC, due to be broadcast tonight he said that by the middle of January 2020 – even before Covid struck, the Prime Minister ‘did not have a plan for governing’.
CARRIE AND THE COUP
The most explosive claim Mr Cummings made was against the Prime Minister’s wife Carrie, who he lost out to in a power struggle last year.
He said she wanted him gone as soon as Mr Johnson was elected in 2019 and wanted to replace him with ‘clowns’.
He said: ‘Carrie’s view was and is – the PM doesn’t have a plan and doesn’t’ know how Whitehall works. In 2019 her view was better that its Dom and Vote Leave team than civil service.
‘But as soon as election was won it was, why should it be Dom and Vote Leave team, why shouldn’t it be me.’
Mr Cunmings continued: ‘Literally immediately after the election it was already clear that this was a problem. We were having meetings in No 10 saying that Carrie all wants us gone.
‘The situation we found ourselves in is that the PM’s girlfriend wanted to get rid of us and appoint clowns to certain key jobs.
‘We actually have some pretty good judgement about who is competent and who isn’t competent.’
And he admitted that he and the rest of his Vote Leave allies began to clash with the then Carrie Symonds over who controlled the premier.
He said: ‘There was a whole official process gone through to hire an excellent young woman, and after months of this process happening it was all just thrown in the bin, and the person who the prime minister’s wanted to be appointed was just suddenly appointed.
‘Me and others said ”this is just a completely hopeless way for things to be run” and that led to a lot of tension.’
He also said he was looking to oust Boris Johnson as Prime Minister only weeks after helping him secure an 80-seat majority.
Mr Cummings, who left No 10 in the autumn after a power struggle, accused Mr Johnson of not having a plan and said he ‘doesn’t know how to be Prime Minister’.
He also laid bare the extent of the fractious relationship between former Vote Leave officials and Carrie only weeks after the landslide win.
‘Before even mid-January we were having meetings in Number 10 saying it’s clear that Carrie (Johnson) wants rid of all of us,’ said the former de facto chief of staff.
‘At that point we were already saying by the summer either we’ll all have gone from here or we’ll be in the process of trying to get rid of him and get someone else in as Prime Minister.’
Mr Cummings claimed that in 2019, ahead of the election, Mrs Johnson was happy to have Vote Leave officials working in Downing Street, but this later changed.
He said: ‘As soon as the election was won her view was, ‘why should it be Dominic and the Vote Leave team?’ Why shouldn’t it be me that’s pulling the strings?”
Ms Kuenssberg accused him if he saw himself as superior in his relationship with the Prime Minister.
He said: ‘I think that I had a plan and I was trying to get things done. He didn’t have a plan and didn’t have an agenda.
‘You know the Prime Minister’s only agenda is buy more trains, buy more buses, have more bikes and build the world’s most stupid tunnel to Ireland — that’s it.’
Earlier in the interview Mr Cummings admitted he thinks other people see him as ‘generally a nightmare’.
BORIS THE MAN
Mr Cummings was also quick to continue to unleash his fury on his old boss the Prime Minister.
He said Mr Johnson thought it was ‘ludicrous’ he was PM after he took over in Downing Street and said he calls the Daily Telegraph his ‘real boss’.
The former chief adviser said the he also made the comment about his old university friend and fellow leader David Cameron’s time in office.
He claimed Mr Johnson has an ‘odd self awareness mode’ and ‘hopeless’ traits and he knows he should not be in his position in his latest bombshells about his old boss.
In a fresh assault on his ex-boss, Dominic Cummings said he had to persuade the PM (pictured right) not to have his weekly audience with the monarch in case he gave her the fatal virus
Mr Cummings said: ‘He’s a very complicated character. He’s unusual in a lot of politicians in having a sort of odd, self awareness mode.
‘He kind of knows in all sorts of ways that it’s ludicrous for him to be in that position.
‘He said that to me a few times before the referendum, he said that on the 24 June, the day after the referendum in 2016.’
He added the PM said: ‘It’s ludicrous that Dave [Cameron] was prime minister, it’s ludicrous that George [Osborne] wants to be prime minister. The whole thing’s ludicrous.’
In one of the more shocking allegations tonight, he claimed the PM still refers to the Daily Telegraph as his ‘real boss’ and said it was ‘hard to tell’ if he was joking.
Mr Cummings added the Prime Minister was being ‘driven round the bend’ by the idea in the media he was a puppet for Vote Leave bosses.
COVID RESPONSE
In other parts of the interview the journalist pushed him on the government’s coronavirus response.
He claimed the Prime Minister thought Covid would be a passing ‘fad’ like Swine Flu was and added it was ‘like a disaster movie’.
He said: ‘It was like a disaster movie but it was real. even in the first week of march [BJ] said ‘business as usual’, he didn’t take it seriously. his view was that it was like swine flu and that he had seen these sort of scares before.’
Mr Cummings said the government’s plan of herd immunity was questioned by a ‘very, very smart physicist’.
He said they spoke to him ahead of lockdown and said: ‘Look it doesn’t seem this has been thought out, has any of this been properly checked?’
And he said they asked him if they could look into another solution.
BARNARD CASTLE
Mr Cummings was probed on the Barnard Castle fallout, which saw him issue a rare speech from Downing Street.
He had driven with his family from London to Durham to his parents’ home despite having Covid symptoms.
But he slammed the way the government decided to handle the incident as ‘extremely chaotic’.
He said: ‘I’d had repeated security problems at my house going back to 2019, these problems had re-emerged… I’d said maybe I’d just move to my Dads farm in Durham.
‘My wife was kind of ill but not with all the right symptoms.
‘The situation was extremely chaotic… the plan was when I discussed it with the PM – he agreed we should just say nothing about it.
‘What then happened is that he suddenly changed his mind and said we can’t stick with the initial plan.
‘I said I’m not going into the security stuff and the whole thing turned into a whole mess.
‘Everything I said in the rose garden was true but i didn’t go into all the security concerns in the background.
‘There’s also no doubt that the way we handled the whole thing was wrong – what I should’ve done is resigned, or spoken to my family and said we’re just going to have to come clean about the whole thing.’
BREXIT
The interview also saw him grilled by the journalist about Brexit and the infamous NHS figure he had plonked on the side of a red bus.
He refused to apologise for it but said people are entitled to oppose Brexit and think it was a mistake.
He smirked when asked about the £350million figure on the Brexit bus after the journalist said it was ‘not the truth’.
He said: ‘We were using true figures… if the worst that can be said about a political campaign is that they used real figures but it needed more context – then you can say ‘vote leave has been more honest than any other political campaign’.’
He added: ‘I don’t think we won on false pretences – the arguments we made about the weaknesses, costs about the EU were vindicated.’
He also said he thought world events had justified Britain leaving the European Union.
Mr Cummings said: ‘I obviously think Brexit was a good thing. The way the world has worked out since 2016 has validated Vote Leave.’
But he was open to people criticising Brexit and says anyone who thinks they know the answer ‘is a complete idiot’.
He said: ‘I don’t know what sort of person you’d be if you didnt think Brexit was going to go down as a massive mixtake.’
BORIS AND THE QUEEN
Mr Cummings also revealed Mr Johnson wanted to meet the Queen at the start of the pandemic despite signs Covid was spreading in Downing Street, it was claimed last night.
In a fresh assault on his ex-boss, he said he had to persuade the PM not to have his weekly audience with the monarch in case he gave her the fatal virus.
He told the BBC: ‘I said ”what are you doing?” and he said ”I’m going to see the Queen”, and I said, ”what on earth are you talking about, of course you can’t go and see the Queen”.
Cummings claimed he told Boris Johnson that ‘of course he couldn’t go and see the Queen’ at the start of the pandemic (file photo)
‘[The PM] said, ”ah, that’s what I do every Wednesday, sod this, I’m gonna go and see her”.’
The former chief adviser alleged he warned the PM that there were already people in No 10 who were isolating and told him: ‘You might have coronavirus.’
He added: ‘I just said, ”if you… give her coronavirus and she dies what are you gonna do, you can’t do that, you can’t risk that, that’s completely insane”.
‘And he said, he basically just hadn’t thought it through, he said, ”yeah, holy s***, I can’t go”.’
Mr Cummings also claimed that Mr Johnson repeatedly said ‘we should never have done the first lockdown’.
THE FUTURE OF POLITICS
Mr Cummings also weighed in on what he hopes will change in British politics in the futre.
He said the country should be ‘very, very aggressively’ trying to get ‘very rare people’ into power because they are ‘times 1,000 smarter than the norm’.
He said: ‘If you’re trying to do very hard things, especially in a pandemic… or the institutional mechanism for war, and dealing with terrorism, things like that, then my view is we should be very, very aggressively trying to get into position these very rare people who are times 100, times 1,000 smarter than the norm.’
He added one option for change would be a new party to take over from the current major opposition.
ON WHY HE IS SPEAKING OUT
BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg asked Mr Cummings how he thought he was seen by others.
He replied: ‘Generally as a nightmare.’
Mr Cummings was also asked about whether all his recent attacks on the government have been revenge for being booted out of No 10.
He said: ‘The reason I’m speaking out is I want people to be thinking about these questions: How are we governed? How is power actually exercised in No 10? What sort of things should be more transparent? How should these power structures be opened up?’
Ms Kuenssberg asked: ‘Does it have to be so personal?’
‘It doesn’t matter if it’s personal. It doesn’t matter if people are upset. All these MPs or ministers or officials or whoever … We need more difficult conversations in this country. More people upset.
‘A lot of people have a pop at me but you don’t see me crying about it.’
On whether he is still in contact with the PM, he added: ‘Last time I spoke to him was the Friday I left No 10.
‘He texted me a few days later asking if I’d speak to him and I said no. It doesn’t bother me one way or the other [if I speak to him again].’
In reply to Mr Cummings’ claims, Downing Street said: ‘Since the start of the pandemic, the prime minister has taken the necessary action to protect lives and livelihoods, guided by the best scientific advice.
‘The government he leads has delivered the fastest vaccination rollout in Europe, saved millions of jobs through the furlough scheme and prevented the NHS from being overwhelmed through three national lockdowns.
‘The government is entirely focused on emerging cautiously from the pandemic and building back better.’
