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Boris Johnson has branded his former chief of staff Dominic Cummings as \u201cweird\u201d and compared him to a \u201chomicidal robot\u201d as he blamed him for his downfall as prime minister.<\/p>\n
In his new autobiography Unleashed, Mr Johnson charted the collapse of his relationship with Mr Cummings from the high point of them working to win the EU referendum in 2016.<\/p>\n
But he has alleged that Mr Cummings\u2019s lack of gratitude for his efforts to defend him over potentially breaking lockdown rules with an infamous trip to Barnard Castle in 2020 led to the former chief of staff using Partygate as a form of revenge.<\/p>\n
Cummings\u2019s role in Brexit was pivotal (Getty)In his new book, Mr Johnson recounts hearing Cummings in an interview for the BBC admitting that he had been conspiring to bring him down as prime minister from early January 2020 just weeks after the massive election victory.<\/p>\n
Johnson noted: \u201cI mean WTF?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou might have thought that the honourable thing to do would have been to resign, if that was how he really felt,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
He suggested that Cummings may have been like the infamous Shakespearean character Iago pursuing \u201cthe motive-hunting of the motiveless malignant\u201d. He also targeted his former director of communications Lee Cain.<\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s latest book is published next week (PA)But Johnson concluded that the briefings against himself, his wife Carrie, dog Dilyn and the government as a whole which led to the Partygate scandal may have been prompted by the Barnard Castle affair in early May 2020.<\/p>\n
At that point Cummings had contracted Covid and fled from London with his family to the northeast when the rest of the country was in lockdown. He infamously then took a trip to Barnard Castle claiming he needed to check his eyesight with a practice drive before returning to London.<\/p>\n
Johnson noted: \u201cI know, I know: it sounds pretty thin, put like that but at the time I really believed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had a \u201cblazing row\u201d with former colleague and friend Will Walden who urged him to sack Cummings.<\/p>\n
But Johnson said he retorted: \u201cThe whole thing is a put-up job. It\u2019s just a load of lefty journalists who want payback for Brexit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former director of communications Lee Cain (PA)He then forced Cummings to give a press conference in the Downing Street garden ahead of the daily press briefing. Johnson claimed Cummings\u2019 \u201ctruculent\u201d demeanour meant \u201che failed to capture much sympathy\u201d.<\/p>\n
The former prime minister added: \u201cI suspect, looking back, that he didn\u2019t thank me for trying heroically to defend him, as I had… I reckon the so-called Partygate affair that he and Lee Cain were to orchestrate was a kind of payback for the indignities he believed he had suffered over Barnard Castle.\u201d<\/p>\n
He described both Cummings and Cain as \u201cgreat colleagues and friends\u201d during the vote Leave campaign and claimed Cummings role in running the referendum operation was \u201cpivotal\u201d and claimed he was \u201csad\u201d to sack them.<\/p>\n
The problems accelerated when he discovered that a story about his dog Dilyn had come from Cummings and Cain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had discovered much later, by a circuitous route, that Cummings had lied to my face about the attacks on Dilyn. He WAS guilty…Perhaps he was somehow nervous of Dilyn, and his doggy nose for the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then said he discovered that Cain and Cummings were behind the \u201cchatty rat\u201d briefings and claimed \u201ctheir behaviour got weirder and weirder\u201d.<\/p>\n
Johnson makes it clear that the final straw was a \u201cspiteful briefing\u201d against adviser Kate Bingham.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was getting insane,\u201d he said comparing Cummings to \u201ca homicidal robot\u201d.<\/p>\n
He sacked them on 13 November 2020 but noted that they left \u201cboth taking with them boxes of material, emails, etc they were to use to confect their future attacks\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, the former prime minister claimed that it became much easier to govern once the two were out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt as if a great weight had been lifted – and for the government as a whole, things began to get dramatically better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email Boris Johnson has branded his former chief of staff Dominic Cummings as \u201cweird\u201d and compared him to a \u201chomicidal robot\u201d as he blamed him for his downfall as prime minister. In his new autobiography […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n