Inside the rift turning things rotten at heart of Number 10

PM’S top team rumoured to be split over whether no-deal is election-winner or end of his premiership

HE FAMOUSLY told Downing Street staff to be “cool like Fonzies” in the face of mounting political pressure over Brexit, but Dominic Cummings’ hotheaded approach to the EU negotiations appears to be heralding less than happy days at No10.

With rumours of a rift with Sir Eddie Lister, Boris Johnson’s chief of staff, beginning to emerge after what is now widely accepted to be Mr Cummings’ explosive memo declaring the Brexit negotiations dead on Monday, there are genuine fears that the former Vote Leave boss’s quest to honour the referendum result could end up destroying the Conservative Party in the process.

Yesterday, Mr Johnson appeared to row back on Mr Cummings’ suggestion that the Tories would have to fight the next election on a no-deal pledge to “marginalise” the Brexit Party in a move that prompted anger among Tories in the Commons tea room.

The Prime Minister is understood to have reassured Damian Green, the chairman of an 80-strong One Nation caucus, that the party’s next manifesto will still promise to get a Brexit deal, not an automatic no-deal.

Tellingly, while Sir Eddie was said to have been at the meeting, Mr Cummings – who has been highly critical of Conservative MPS in the past – was not.

It comes after Cabinet ministers including Nicky Morgan, the Culture Secretary, voiced concern about Mr Cummings’ combative approach.

Meanwhile, there are suggestions of a “parallel government” being run out of No10 by Sir Eddie.

The Prime Minister’s top team is said to be split over how the Tories should campaign when the public goes to the polls as early as next month, with Mr Cummings’ old Vote Leave contingency seemingly willing to deliver Brexit by any means necessary versus those who “want Boris’s biography to have more than a Brexit chapter”.

As one Downing Street insider put it: “One view is that the Conservative Party has to survive this intact; the opposing view is, if we don’t get Brexit done, there won’t be a Conservative Party. There is no personal animosity between Dom and Eddie, but it’s fair to say Eddie is despairing about the potential damage being done to the longterm prospects of a Boris Johnson premiership.”

Rumours of the Remainers in Cabinet being on “resignation watch” appear exaggerated, however. While Julian Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, is undoubtedly the most wobbly along with Ms Morgan and curiously, Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, described as “strangely shirty with the PM” at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, a source close to Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said: “It’s tin-hat time, and Matt’s got a big tin hat. The strategy is, go for a deal but leave without a deal if we can’t get a deal.”

Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, was said to be on the verge of quitting although one insider pointed out that he was “already in a precarious position” over his prorogation legal advice.

Mr Johnson appears to have placated ministers by describing the increasingly tense political ping-pong with the EU as the “compression phase” of negotiations but his admission that he had no knowledge of Mr Cummings’ memo in advance of its publication in The Spectator on Monday night has raised eyebrows about the Leave svengali’s increasingly bullish behaviour.

“Even Vote Leave purists like Lee Cain [Downing Street’s director of communications] despair when Dom heads into Parliament for a chat with journalists,” said a No10 source. “There is a sense that he behaves like this to take the heat off Boris – but also a very real impression that he doesn’t give a f--- about the political consequences.”

Danny Kruger, the Prime Minister’s political secretary, has been caught in the middle of the maelstrom. “His job is to look after Parliament and MPS and every time he makes progress garnering Labour or Tory rebel support, Dom puts out a briefing and burns all the bridges,” added the source.

Spartans – wary of Mr Cummings after he was disparaging about ERG members during the referendum – begrudgingly back his clean Brexit stance yet resent him for his unwillingness to form a pact with Nigel Farage. “This is a Cummings-inspired s--- show,” one senior Tory told The Daily Telegraph.

Meanwhile, moderates fear that a Farageian approach will “completely alienate the business minded, capitalowning party electorate we depend on for votes.”

As another MP put it: “This high-risk strategy could leave us in the hands of a coalition of chaos lead by Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson, a second referendum and probably no Brexit at all”.

With Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) seemingly at odds with Mr Cummings over how an elec

tion should be fought, all eyes are on campaign chief Isaac Levido, Sir Lynton Crosby’s protégé, who was appointed to succeed him in August.

A former strategist for the Right- leaning Liberal Party in his native Australia, Mr Levido is overseeing the Government’s political strategy and campaigning not just from Downing Street but also CCHQ. “This is the next big battle,” said one Downing Street source. “Is Levido going to taking his lead from Cummings or CCHQ?”

Having postponed a major operation to become “assistant to the Prime Minister”, Mr Cummings was never supposed to stick around after Oct 31.

But with the prospect of an Article 50 extension looming ever closer, few would bet against the man who told the British public to “take back control” doubling down on his pledge to “Get Brexit Done”.