Tensions high after Cummings sabotages plan for compromise
DOMINIC CUMMINGS personally sabotaged a compromise plan put forward by the Conservative MPS who went on to rebel against the Government, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
The Prime Minister’s chief adviser launched a foul-mouthed tirade against Greg Clark after the former business secretary proposed the Government set aside a day after the October European summit for MPS to vote on a nodeal Brexit.
The proposal would have meant MPS would have been able to see the shape of Boris Johnson’s negotiation plan before voting on whether a further extension to the negotiations was necessary. The Telegraph understands Mr Clark made the suggestion during the rebels’ meeting with Mr Johnson on Tuesday, and it was enthusiastically received by his colleagues.
The Prime Minister told Mr Clark someone from his team would be in contact to discuss the idea further, and later that afternoon the MP received a call from Mr Cummings. According to a source in the rebel group, Mr Cummings said: “You Tory MPS need to get it through your f------ heads that we are leaving the EU on October 31.”
The Telegraph has been told by two sources in the rebel group that relations between Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings are becoming strained, owing to his chief adviser’s behaviour. One of the 21 rebels said they were hearing of “huge tensions in Downing Street” after Tuesday’s defeat.
“This was not supposed to be the way it worked,” the MP said. “He could well find himself in a situation where this Bill has passed and he cannot get his election, so he is trapped.
“Proroguing Parliament set the cat among the pigeons. It turned our group from a rabble to a fully formed force.”
Another rebel specifically referenced Mr Cummings’s conversation with Mr Clark, saying: “I gather that call has upset Boris a bit.” Mr Johnson tried to draw some of the heat away from his adviser in a meeting with his backbench MPS yesterday, joking that any bad behaviour by Mr Cummings was in fact the Prime Minister in a “latex mask”.
On Tuesday evening, the Downing Street aide reportedly taunted Jeremy Corbyn over his refusal to support Mr Johnson’s call for a general election.
Mr Cummings was reported to have said: “Come on, Jeremy, let’s do this election. Don’t be scared.”
Cat Smith, the Labour MP, tweeted: “As one of several shadow cabinet members stood right next to Jeremy (who was on the phone at the time), I just thought there was some loud bloke who stunk of booze yelling at us.”
Frustration at the conduct of the Downing Street official, who acted as campaign chief for Vote Leave in the 2016 EU referendum, spilt on to the airwaves yesterday. Sir Roger Gale, the veteran Conservative MP for North Thanet, went on television to call him a “foul-mouthed oaf [who is] throwing his weight around”.
Speaking in the Commons, Margot James, the former digital minister and one of the 21 MPS to lose the Tory whip, said: “The great Lady [Margaret Thatcher] once said ‘advisers advise, ministers decide’. Can I ask the Prime Minister to bear that statement closely in mind in relation to his own chief adviser – Dominic Cummings.”
John Mcdonnell, the shadow chancellor, accused his opposite number of being Mr Cummings’s puppet during the debate on the Spending Review.
Referencing the dismissal of Sajid Javid’s special adviser Sonia Khan last week, Mr Mcdonnell said: “Could I ask him, though, to take a message back to the person who obviously drafted the statement? His political master, Mr Dominic Cummings. The man who cancels the Chancellor’s own speeches, sacks his staff without telling him and has them escorted off the premises by an armed police officer.”