DOM’S DOOMED COUP AT No10
Vicious attacks on Carrie and – days after this election victory snap – Cummings’ bid to oust PM
DOMINIC Cummings considered staging a coup against Boris Johnson just days after the 2019 election, he said in an extraordinary interview last night.
The Prime Minister’s former chief adviser said Mr Johnson’s then-partner, now wife, Carrie wanted ‘rid of all of us’ despite the Tories’ success at the polls.
In his first major television interview, Mr Cummings stated that Mrs Johnson believed then and now that her husband didn’t ‘have a plan’. She was determined to ‘pull the strings’, fire her enemies and appoint her favourites, he said.
The ex-adviser – widely seen as the architect of Brexit – claimed he and his Vote Leave colleagues feared they were out of favour as soon as the dust settled on the December general election.
‘Before even mid-January we were having meetings in No 10 saying it’s clear that Carrie wants rid of all of us,’ he said.
‘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.’ The extraordinary revelation is one in a series of claims made during an hour-long interview with the BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg.
Mr Cummings also claimed the PM was reluctant to tighten Covid restrictions last autumn because ‘the people who are dying are essentially all over 80’.
He also said Mr Johnson had wanted to see the Queen in person at the start of the pandemic but had to be persuaded not to have his weekly audience with Her Majesty in case he infected and killed her. No 10 denied the allegation.
Mr Cummings, who left Downing Street last autumn following the power struggle with Mrs Johnson, also told Miss Kuenssberg that Mr Johnson was not the ‘right person’ to run the country. He suggested Mr Johnson had only been selected to lead the Conservative Party and the country to resolve Brexit.
‘He doesn’t have a plan, he doesn’t know how to be Prime Minister and we only got him in there because we had to solve a certain problem, not because he was the right person to be running the country,’ he said. ‘Carrie’s view was – and is – the Prime Minister doesn’t have a plan and he doesn’t know how Whitehall works.
He went on: ‘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?”’
Downing Street has repeatedly said that it is incorrect to suggest Mrs Johnson has a central role in running the country. But Mr Cummings said: ‘Within days we were in a situation where the Prime Minister’s girlfriend is trying to get rid of us and appoint complete clowns to certain key jobs.’
Mr Cummings – who denied he was seeking ‘revenge’ in the interview – suggested he could help form a new party or try to take over the Tory Party to oust Mr Johnson. He claimed that at times Downing Street was ‘like a disaster movie’.
He added: ‘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.’
A No 10 spokesman told the BBC: ‘Political appointments are entirely made by the Prime Minister.’
They added: ‘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 is entirely focused on emerging cautiously from the pandemic and building back better.’
‘It was like a disaster movie’