One leak and you are out, Johnson adviser tells aides
BORIS JOHNSON’S new adviser Dominic Cummings has told ministerial aides that he will fire any of them who leak Cabinet papers.
Mr Cummings told aides at meeting that there is a new “one strike policy” on leaks. “He was firm – if you leak you are gone,” one aide said.
Mr Cummings told the group of advisers that if any of them tried to take him to an employment tribunal “you will be dead to me”, one source claimed.
The irony of the anti-leak drive itself leaking to The Daily Telegraph may not be lost on Mr Cummings, a former adviser to Michael Gove and a key strategist on the Vote Leave campaign during the 2016 EU referendum.
Mr Cummings, who was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a Channel 4 film of the campaign, did not return a call from The Telegraph yesterday.
A No 10 source said: “It sounds like someone is breaking the one strike policy. There has been a very clear message to special advisers that our focus is about delivering, not about swanning around.”
Theresa May’s Government was badly damaged by repeated leaks, notably one from a meeting of the National Security Council which led to the sacking in May of Gavin Williamson when he was defence secretary. Mr Williamson denied being the leaker.
During the Tory leadership hustings earlier this month Mr Johnson said he would ban all leaking from Cabinet meetings if he became Prime Minister.
He said: “If you are going to have a discussion with serious senior colleagues, then you have got to allow people to speak their minds... and then don’t leak it.”
Mr Cummings also told the meeting to prepare an emergency budget in the week starting Oct 7, days after the end of the Conservative party conference.
One source said: “He said we are going to have a budget in the first week of October. The party conference will be a no deal rally – it is not about the speeches.”