Battle over the purse strings escalates divide in Downing Street
Camilla Tominey Cummings is not far from talk of any coup, having left Sunak unscathed in his attacks on the PM
You do not need to look far back in British political history to recognise that tensions have always existed between No10 and No 11.
Rarely the friendliest of neighbours, Harold Macmillan spent most of his premiership at odds with the Treasury, Edward Heath became his own chancellor because he was so unhappy with what Anthony Barber was doing while Harold Wilson and James Callaghan spent years at economic odds.
Even when there has barely been a cigarette paper between the ideology of the incumbents – such as Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson and Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – relationships have still proved stormy.
So it is hardly surprising that we are now seeing sparks fly between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, whose relationship is complicated by more factors than simply the Government’s response to the coronavirus crisis.
Amid rumours of mounting friction between the pair, we now hear that the Prime Minister “jokingly” threatened to demote the Chancellor after he called for the travel restrictions to be relaxed in a leaked letter.
“Maybe it’s time we looked at Rishi as the next Secretary of State for Health,” Mr Johnson is reported to have remarked after becoming furious when details of the widely-circulated letter ended up in the newspapers, accusing his Cabinet colleague of “a failure of political judgment”.
While the comments were apparently only made in “jest”, the fact that Mr Sunak felt the need to write a letter after a meeting between No 10 and No 11 over the travel rules allegedly broke down suggests the dynamic may have shifted between the two most powerful politicians in Britain.
It was only last autumn that the Chancellor was describing his relationship with “the boss” as “invaluable”.
Speaking to the Conservative Party Virtual Conference, the 41-year-old political wunderkind told delegates: “I’ve seen up close the burden the Prime Minister carries.
“We all know he has an ability to connect with people in a way few politicians manage. It is a special and rare quality. But what the commentators don’t see, the thing I see, is the concern and care he feels, every day, for the well-being of the people of our country.
“Yes, it’s been difficult, challenges are part of the job, but on the big calls, in the big moments, Boris Johnson has got it right and we need that leadership.”
Seemingly keen to stress his relative inexperience to Mr Johnson, he thanked him for “entrusting me with this job” and at a later press conference, revealed that he always calls him “Prime Minister”, despite his request to call him Boris.
Even going so far as to rule himself out as a possible rival, when asked whether he wanted to be a future prime minister, he replied: “Definitely not, seeing what the PM has to deal with. This is a job hard enough for me.”
Yet with Mr Johnson’s approval rating having plunged to an all-time low, with an Opinium poll finding yesterday it has fallen to -16, down from the -13 he recorded two weeks ago and -8 a fortnight before that – the Prime Minister appears more vulnerable than he has ever been during his two-year administration.
Having spent recent years checking his back for knives being wielded by his arch rival Michael Gove, the collapse of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster’s marriage means he is no longer the main threat to his leadership. Instead it is the former Winchester head boy who he promoted to the second most influential position in Cabinet in February 2020 despite him having only been elected as the MP for Richmond, North Yorkshire, in 2015.
He may deny wanting to succeed Mr Johnson but Mr Sunak remains the most popular candidate by far with 40 per cent of British adults believing he is doing a good job, according to the latest Yougov survey, compared with 38 per cent for Mr Johnson.
Whether he would ever make a move against the Prime Minister remains unlikely – but intriguingly, Dominic Cummings’ fingerprints are not far from talk of any attempted coup.
Having spent recent weeks machine-gunning Downing Street with his select committee and TV appearances, not to mention his lengthy Twitter threads and blog posts, the Prime Minister’s allies have been left perturbed as to why the Chancellor has emerged from the wreckage unscathed – even though Mr Sunak is one of the most lockdown-sceptic members of the Cabinet.
According to one Tory source: “There has always been suspicion around Dom’s relationship with Rishi. Rishi was the one saying, from very early on, that we need to learn to live with the virus and yet Cummings has failed to land a blow on him. Why?”
It could be that the former Vote Leave svengali genuinely thinks it would be preferable for Mr Sunak to replace Mr Johnson and wants to keep his powder dry. As he arrogantly told the BBC’S Laura Kuenssberg, he believes he can one day return to government. If not under the leadership of his long-term ally Mr Gove – might he be pinning his future hopes on the Chancellor?
Much has been made of Mr Cummings’ once close relationship with The Spectator’s political editor James Forsyth and the fact that Mr Sunak was best man at the journalist’s 2011 wedding to Allegra Stratton, now the spokeswoman for the Cop26 climate change summit. (Although as another insider pointed out, Mr
Forsyth now blames Mr Cummings for forcing his wife out of her previous role as Downing Street press secretary, rendering him an increasingly unlikely powerbroker).
Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary who was sacked as Chancellor on Mr Cummings’s say-so only to be replaced by his protégé Mr Sunak, also plays a compelling role in the ongoing tensions.
It was recently reported that Mr Johnson and Mr Javid had been “ganging up” against Mr Sunak in insisting he fund the Tories’ costly social care plans with a new tax. A source said: “When the PM brought in Sajid, he told him that he had to back him against the Treasury on this, so Rishi is being ganged up on. We promised in the manifesto not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT.”
The incident arguably gets to the crux of the issue between what one source described as the “big spending PM” and a Chancellor keen to claw back the exorbitant costs of Covid.
If the relationship appears on shaky ground now, the autumn spending review threatens to derail it completely as Mr Sunak attempts to shrink a state Mr Johnson appears intent on expanding. “Boris has always thought you can spend your way out of a crisis, but I think Rishi is desperately worried about the state of the UK’S finances,” said one former colleague.
“Forget all the personal issues at play here – what this is really about is a Prime Minister who can’t even seem to control his own spending, let alone balance Britain’s books.
“In the past, when he’s been short of money, Boris was always able to get a pay rise and give a few more after dinner speeches to make up the shortfall. But he can’t apply the same formula as the Prime Minister if there’s no money left.”
In the battle between public expenditure and fiscal prudence there can only be one winner. Only time will tell who really holds the power in Downing Street as No 10 and No 11 continue to do battle over the very principles that have defined Conservatism for more than a century.
There has always been suspicion at Dom’s relationship with Rishi
The PM told Sajid he had to back him against the Treasury, so Rishi is being ganged up on
Boris has always thought you can spend your way out of a crisis, but Rishi is desperately worried about the state of the UK’S finances
What this is really about is a Prime Minister who can’t control his own spending
Having spent years checking for knives being wielded by his arch rival Michael Gove, he is no longer the main threat