INSIDE BORIS’S FIRST CABINET
He scorns May’s Cabinet as being like university seminars Wants talk of ‘No Deal’ replaced with words such as preparedness Lays into Hammond who thinks Brexit is ‘an adverse weather event’ Warns that they only have a few months to announce policies. .
BORIS JOHNSON opened his first Cabinet meeting with an astonishing attack on Theresa May’s Government – comparing it to a group of floundering students trying to sound clever, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The new Prime Minister used the inaugural gathering of his top team to compare the previous meetings under Mrs May to pointless university seminars in which people ‘felt that they had to say something but struggled to come up with anything meaningful’.
The broadside marked the beginning of an extraordinary 11 days that have seen Mr Johnson and his chief enforcer Dominic Cummings rip up the usual Whitehall power structures and Downing Street operation to achieve their ultimate goal of a new deal with Brussels.
Brexit decision-making has been wrestled from the 33- strong Cabinet, and instead moved to a core of half a dozen powerful Ministers, with the rest told to talk about anything else but the UK’s EU exit.
Mr Johnson vowed he would use his weekly Cabinet meeting on a Tuesday morning only to discuss ‘big policy issues that are meaningful to the people of the UK’.
And in a major hint of a looming Election, he warned his team only had a ‘ few months’ and to make the most of the time they had to ‘populate the political landscape’ with more interesting policies than Europe.
He tasked them with ‘ getting Brexit off the front pages of the newspapers’ and demanded they stop using the ‘unhelpful’ expression No Deal, and instead replace it with language about being prepared, ‘focusing on order rather than disorder’.
Not content with attacking his predecessor, he also took aim at gloomy Brexit naysayers such as former Chancellor Philip Hammond – now licking his wounds on the backbenches – who regarded leaving the EU at the end of October as an ‘adverse weather event’.
Having served i n Mrs May’s Cabinet for two years, Mr Johnson’s withering assessment of his Conservative colleague stunned those present at the meeting. One Minister said: ‘ In no uncertain terms, change has come.’
Another source said: ‘ Theresa used to go around the table pretending to care what people said and then go and do what she wanted anyway. There’s none of t hat any more.
‘The message was, basically, if you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t bother.’
The meeting finished ten minutes earlier than usual, they added.
Although he praised each member of his new team as brilliant, Mr Johnson warned that none of them
‘What is said in this room stays in this room’
was indispensable in his mission to leave the EU on Halloween, with or without a deal.
Vowing to close down the leaks that blighted Mrs May’s Government, the Prime Minister told his newly appointed Ministers ‘what is said in this room stays in this room’ and he would be ruthless with anyone who broke the Cabinet omerta with a ‘ one strike and you are out’ rule. He added that while he would be disappointed to see any of his appointments sacked, he would not flinch at kicking them out and hoped his words were not a ‘forlorn plea’.
The irony that his warning has leaked to this newspaper will not be lost on the nascent Downing Street administration – but there has been a marked escalation in discipline enforcement.
Mr Johnson has wasted no time stamping his authority on the Cabinet and Whitehall with the help of his senior adviser Dominic Cummings, who has sidelined chief of staff Sir Edward Lister. On Friday night, Mr Cummings launched a stark warning of his own that any Minister who stepped out of line by going off message will be ‘slapped down’ by No 10.
Gathering Government special advisers for their weekly meeting, he told them that the urgency of the Brexit mission meant ‘they do not have time to defend this s**t’ and he would brutally make clear that Ministers who go off message do not speak for the Government.
He pointed to Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, who earned a stinging public rebuke on Wednesday after making unscripted comments about anonymity for rape suspects.
Mr Cummings, the architect of Vote Leave’s stunning 2016 victory, who was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a referendum drama, has littered Downing Street with countdown clocks to October 31 to hammer home the urgency.
One looks down at the Prime Minister from the grand marble mantelpiece in his study, next to the portrait of Mr Johnson’s hero Sir Winston Churchill, while Mr Cummings’ own is a mere makeshift whiteboard.
And in order to psychologically ram home the significance of No Deal planning, meetings have been moved to Cobra, the national security hub at the centre of the Cabinet Office.
With lengthy minutes of meetings axed to keep a tighter rein on information seeping out of No 10, the stark realities of a disorderly departure are instead displayed on big screens.
In a snub to the Civil Service, Mr Cummings has also dramatically increased the number of taxpayerfunded special advisers, with some Ministers allowed to appoint four so-called ‘Spads’, while No 10 has close to 30.
These political operatives are able to by-pass the usual rules of Whitehall impartiality, with Mr Cummings demanding their personal loyalty to Mr Johnson rather than their Ministers.
Any concern that this will send the cost to the public purse soaring has been greeted with a cold-eyed declaration that ‘this is a time of national crisis’.
Sources say Mr Cummings has also put Downing Street on a permanent campaign footing.
Aides are expected to be ready for a 6.10am call after the first round of headlines on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. There is then a core meeting at 8am, with Mr Johnson joining at 8.30am. Another compulsory staff meeting is convened at 7pm.
One insider, who also worked for Mrs May, said: ‘If they had been at this tempo before we would have got a heck of a lot more done.’
Mr Cummings warned aides on Friday that ‘Europe will not row back until it is virtually too late’, with Mr Johnson’s administration braced for an extraordinary showdown next month with both Parliament and Brussels.
‘Steel yourselves,’ he urged his large new team. ‘Steel yourselves.’
‘Europe won’t row back until it’s virtually too late’