... as Boris f ights his ‘West Wing’ plans for No 10

BORIS JOHNSON has j oi ned forces with senior civil servants to resist moves by No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings to shift them to a new suite of West Wing-style offices in Whitehall.

According to senior Government sources, the Prime Minister has spent six months objecting to Mr Cummings’s attempt to move him out of the ramshackle No 10 ‘den’ where he works and into an openplan space more similar to the West Wing of the White House, including large television screens displaying the ‘performance data’ of the Civil Service.

It is part of a wider attempt by Mr Cummings to restructure the relationship between No 10 and the Civil Service to give Downing Street more control over the Whitehall machinery.

But Mr Johnson is understood to share the reluctance of senior mandarins to make the move, and has indicated his intention to stay in the cramped office with its threadbare carpets, trailing wires and overflowing bookshelves.

Other officials, including Mr Johnson’s private office and members of his policy unit, will move to new rooms in the Cabinet Office.

It is part of a plan by Mr Cummings to centralise and streamline the often cumbersome decisionmaking processes in No 10 – a move civil servants have privately characterised as a ‘power grab’.

The rickety corridors and offices of Downing Street create an often claustrophobic atmosphere for officials and political advisers, and have also been linked to the rapid spread of the coronavirus to Mr Johnson and his inner circle earlier this year.

A source said last night: ‘Boris likes his cosy office but Dom might still get his way.’