The shadowy assassins with their sights on Boris’s reforms

BORIS JOHNSON’S closest aides are paranoid that dark forces in Whitehall are trying to ‘strangle at birth’ sweeping civil servant reforms.

That’s the stinging verdict of senior communications mandarin Alex Aiken, revealed in a furious rant to underlings on Friday.

The Civil Service bigwig spoke out after plans to cull his 4,000 spin doctors were leaked to the media before he could tell his staff.

In an outburst that will reignite a war of words between No 10 and officialdom after the ousting of Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, Aiken exposed a culture in which Downing Street lives in fears of plans being sabotaged.

He railed: ‘It is extraordinary t hat t he PM and hi s s eni or colleagues took the view that if they want to make this happen, we have to announce it, we have to make it a thing, whereas if we let it float around the system for a couple of weeks the naysayers and the opponents and the organisational assassins will come out and try to strangle it at birth. That is why I am sorry to say it appeared in The Times before you heard about it.’

Aiken pointed the finger of blame directly at Johnson’s team, blasting their ‘leakism culture’, adding: ‘ I do just wonder why people want to do this, it’s absol utely extraordinary – you’re undermining the PM, it’s a culture that we have got to stop. We know what you are doing.’

A ‘brave’ choice of words, as Sir Humphrey might say…