Loyalty to ‘the boss’ has left Cabinet in limbo without a leader

When the Prime Minister’s brutal reshuffle saw Sajid Javid replaced as Chancellor by Rishi Sunak in an unprecedented Downing Street power grab, Boris Johnson was accused of “regal arrogance” by his own MPS.

Having taken over the Treasury and appointed a cabinet of ostensibly supine ministers in hock to No 10, the emergence of the court of King Boris struck some Conservatives as a little too Tudor.

With the final book in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy published soon afterwards, twice-married Mr Johnson drew somewhat unfavourable comparisons to Henry VIII while his right-hand man Dominic Cummings was likened to Thomas Cromwell.

Yet in reality the new administration was rather more like Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, with Mr Johnson leading an inner circle of loyal advisers in Mr Cummings, Sir Eddie Lister, his chief of staff, Ben Gascoigne, his longserving political secretary, and Lee Cain, his ever faithful communications secretary.

Yet with at least four of the quintet now thought to either have coronavirus or be in self-isolation due to their close proximity to the PM, who last night was released from intensive care at St Thomas’ Hospital, it seems that even Downing Street’s worst emergency scenario planning did not account for a temporary regency in the absence of its top team.

In fact, although the Government does have a plan for running the country if the PM and senior ministers are “taken out” by a sudden strike, the top secret protocol, drawn up some years ago by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, never imagined a situation where ministers might be incapacitated one by one, rather than all at the same time.

One senior Whitehall source involved in drawing up the UK’S pandemic plans said the lack of planning for a disease sweeping through Downing Street had made it more difficult to operate a clear chain of command.

“We never planned for the Prime Minister to be taken out by a disease like this. Or for who might take over, or the exact chain of command,” the source said.

“That was left up to the Cabinet Office, who had a plan for a nuclear strike, or a terrorist attack, or something of that nature.

“The problem now is that we never planned for ministers to be taken out one by one over a period of time. That has clearly led to some confusion over who is in charge of what.”

Little wonder, then, that Mr Johnson’s appointed deputy, Dominic Raab, who as well as being Foreign Secretary holds the supreme Cabinet position of First Secretary, is already beginning to feel a little frustrated at the current state of limbo.

According to one Tory ally: “It’s very difficult for Dom because he feels he has been given the authority to chair meetings, reach a consensus and make decisions but the rest of the Cabinet appear to be going around saying it’s a collective. It’s fine for it to be a collective, but that’s no good if no one’s leading it.”

With the decision on when the lockdown should be lifted seemingly on hold until Mr Johnson is out of hospital, both the Government and indeed the country appear in a state of paralysis.

Naturally, some Tory MPS are already beginning to point the finger of blame at Mr Cummings who, like the PM, is still suffering from symptoms of Covid-19.

“I’m afraid the Cummings plan of a centralised Government is unravelling on a daily basis,” said one.

Yet to be fair to Mr Cummings, it was Mr Johnson who appointed one of the least experienced Cabinets in recent memory.

Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office Minister and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, is the only one who has run multiple departments – but he, too, is self-isolating after his daughter Beatrice, 17, came down with a fever at the weekend.

According to one Tory source: “You can compare Boris’s top-down approach to Thatcher’s but the difference is Maggie had very powerful figures in her Cabinet like Norman Tebbit, Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe.

“The Johnson administration has only been there five minutes and all the big beasts like Iain Duncan Smith and David Davis and even Jeremy Hunt were cut out.

“No one in there has an independent power base. They’re all there because Boris put them there which means they’re extremely insecure and

‘We never planned for ministers to be taken out one by one. This has clearly led to some confusion over who is in charge of what’

nervous about taking any decisions.

“In terms of the lockdown it means that nothing will happen until Boris is back in the saddle and when the regime picks up the reins again. The trouble is we are in the middle of a global pandemic and no one knows quite when that will be.”

Of course No 10 insiders insist Mr Johnson, described by Mr Raab last night as “continuing to make positive steps forward” and in “good spirits”, remains the ruler of all he surveys.

The difficulty with the PM getting ill has not just been his own reluctance to take a back seat – even when his temperature continued to rise last week – but the fact that, with his 80-seat election victory, he is viewed as having transcended the party, internally as well as externally.

In a sign of Downing Street’s continued desire to assert authority in Mr Johnson’s absence, The Daily Telegraph has learnt that MPS have been instructed not to give TV or radio interviews without prior approval.

According to one MP: “The message went out that if you didn’t tell No 10 then they would find out. It all fits a pattern – it’s control, control, control.”

While such tactics mean both ministers and MPS are so far remaining unwaveringly loyal to “the boss”, as any politician knows – the problem with power vacuums is they have a tendency to attract pretenders to the throne.