Good cop, bad cop act of PM and his enforcer

THE ‘good cop, bad cop’ leadership style of the Prime Minister and Dominic Cummings also extends to their dealings with the Civil Service.

Boris Johnson told a gathering of the so-called ‘Top 200’ mandarins on Wednesday that he did not blame them for the failure to exit the European Union in March.

The meeting had to take place in the Treasury to accommodate the 120 officials who showed up.

One source described a ‘love-bombing’ strategy that included gushing remarks and fulsome pleas that, with their help, Mr Johnson can achieve a ‘backstopectomy’ in talks with Brussels that would get Brexit through Parliament before crashing out without a deal at the end of October.

The typical Johnson turn of phrase amused attendees, but there were bigger smiles after they were told they were still allowed to go on holiday this month as long as they kept their teams properly staffed.

However, there is bad blood in Downing Street after senior civil servant Alex Aiken arrived at work on Monday to find that his desk had disappeared from the centre of operations.

The head of all Government communications was moved over the weekend to a different part of the building by Mr Cummings with no warning – and the extraordinary snub has not gone down well.

And after years of whispering around Theresa May, officials say now ‘every single word seems to be f*** this or f*** that’ from the top down of the new regime.

However, they admit that at the same time as the dramatic increase in tempo, there has been ‘more laughter in this building in the last two weeks than there has been in the last two years’.

‘More laughter in the last two weeks than in the last two years’