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It was Wednesday night when a power struggle broke out at 10 Downing Street that did not end well after midnight. It all started when Lee Cain resigned. Shortly after 9 p.m., Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s communications director announced to the public that he would be leaving his job at the end of the year. Cain did not give a reason, only pointed out that the prime minister had offered him the post of chief of staff. But Johnson withdrew this offer without further ado. And so, apparently, Cain had no choice but to flee.
His resignation is particularly significant because Cain was the right-hand man to Johnson’s controversial senior adviser, Dominic Cummings. The pioneer of the Vote Leave campaign was previously considered the prime minister’s closest confidante. He not only invented the slogan “Get Brexit” and thereby helped Johnson achieve a triumphant electoral victory; Cummings also considers himself more powerful and influential than most of Johnson’s cabinet ministers. So it could have been assumed that Johnson would be Cummings’ chief of staff’s confidant.
But it did not. According to British media reports, Johnson’s fiancee, Carrie Symonds, objected. The former Conservative Party communications chief apparently believed that Cain would do her husband no good in the new position.
This has to do with the fact that Symonds’s friend, Allegra Stratton, doesn’t think much of Cain. Stratton was recently hired by Johnson to hold daily press conferences along the lines of the White House beginning in January. Had the Prime Minister promoted his longtime associate, Cain, to Chief of Staff, Stratton would have been below him in the hierarchy. She reportedly didn’t want to accept that and, unlike Cain, knew that her friend Symonds was on her side.
Lee Cain, formerly Boris Johnson’s communications director, now needs a new job.
(Photo: JOHN SIBLEY / REUTERS)
When Stratton was appointed, Johnson misled Cummings: According to insiders, the prime minister should not have informed him of his plans in advance. Now Johnson has made a second decision in no time over Cummings’ head that his senior adviser cannot please. And so the rumor spread late Wednesday night that Cummings was also about to quit his job. Indeed, a day later, the senior adviser announced his resignation from the BBC: he wanted to be “largely superfluous” by Christmas at the latest.
Speculation that chief Brexit negotiator David Frost is considering resigning was initially unconfirmed.
“This is great news,” says a minister.
However, it is clear that with Cain a convinced Brexiteer is leaving the center of power. Conservative MPs already suspected Thursday that this was the beginning of the end for the Downing Street vote-and-leave gang. If it really did come to that, it would mean a turnaround in government policy.
According to British newspapers, some ministers were delighted with the departure of Cummings’ confidant. “This is great news. It will lead to better government,” said one anonymously at the Financial times quote. Apparently, there were many in the cabinet who saw in Cain’s work the reason why Johnson seems like a driven man in the Corona crisis, and does not reach many citizens with his messages.
Labor leader Keir Starmer used the chaos in Downing Street for his own ends and once again presented Johnson as an incompetent head of government. “What the heck is going on?” Starmer asked Thursday in an interview with LBC. “We are in the middle of a pandemic, we all care about our health and our families, and this group is fighting behind the door of 10 Downing Street.” Ironically, the day Britain became the first country in Europe to complain of more than 50,000 deaths per crown, the government was fighting for jobs, criticized the opposition leader.
