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Dominic Cummings left Downing Street after his relationship with the prime minister “plummeted,” said a former cabinet minister.
Cummings stepped down as senior adviser on Friday after a power struggle that has rocked the Boris Johnson administration.
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis said Cummings “relationship with the prime minister fell off a cliff” and that his departure was an opportunity to reestablish the government.
A top conservative backbencher who supported Cummings for his coronavirus lockdown violations said Saturday that he was wrong to do so.
Crispin Blunt said he should not have supported Cummings after The Guardian and the Daily Mirror exposed his controversial trips to Durham and Barnard Castle at the height of England’s first lockdown. Blunt said the confinement trips “sucked.”
Blunt was not one of 45 MPs who called for Cummings to leave at the time, but speaking on Times Radio he admitted that the aide’s behavior had “seriously undermined” the government’s message about the coronavirus.
When asked if he had been right to endorse the advisor, Blunt said: “With the benefit of hindsight, no. However, you have to make a call about what is considered fair and appropriate in the circumstances, and Boris made a call about it. “
During his visit to northern England, Cummings drove with his wife and son to the picturesque town of Barnard Castle, 30 miles from his parents’ home, and said it was to check that his eyesight was in good condition.
Crispin said that while he felt Cummings had done “the right thing for his family,” he had eroded public trust in the government and its message about the Covid crisis.
“The politics obviously absolutely sucked and once people had fooled him he was a very bad example and seriously undermined, obviously from the great attention it received, trust in government policy,” he said.
Davis said on Saturday that Johnson had been “very dependent” on Cummings for a long time, and asked the prime minister to “correct” the marginalization of MPs for the past 11 months.
“The whole attitude towards parliament has been pressured, it has been sidelined, and similarly, it is said, and I am not in a position to know, but the cabinet is said to have been sidelined as well,” Davis told Times Radio.
Davis said Cummings’ decision to leave his job by the Downing Street front door, when his office was in another part of the building and there were several other exits, was “completely deliberate” as he wanted to leave a “picture.”
He told BBC Breakfast: “He could have gone out the back door, which is almost underground, not visible, or he could have gone out the Whitehall entrance; outside the Cabinet Office – anyone would have been possible.
“He chose to leave that image out with a box. He could have perfectly tucked his coffee mug or whatever else was in his backpack, but he didn’t. “
Saturday’s newspapers were awash with complaints and counterclaims about the events of the past 48 hours that led to the departure of both Cummings and communications director Lee Cain, ending the Downing Street Vote Leave clique’s control.
Cummings denied that he had been pressured, telling the Telegraph that the stories that Johnson had held him responsible for negative reports were “fabricated.”
He reported that Johnson was unhappy with the characterization of his partner, Carrie Symonds, in the media. He was “particularly irritated by newspaper reports that Ms. Symonds was referred to by Cummings loyalists by nicknames that included ‘Princess Nut Nuts.’
A former special adviser to Grant Shapps, the transportation secretary, spoke of the coercive and intimidating nature of Cummings and Cain’s operation, calling them a “school mobster” who had warned him that if the leaks about the coronavirus travel corridors they did not stop “we are going to have to start shooting people.”
Neil Tweedie, who was not found responsible for any leak, said of Cummings and Cain in the Daily Mail that “fear was their tool.”
“The Vote Leave mob, drunk with their success in the referendum and elections, believed they were untouchable,” he wrote. He recounted how Cummings, demanding full loyalty from special advisers to other ministers, held selfish Zoom meetings at “spad school” and delivered monologues while “sitting at the end of the cabinet room table, holding the flag union hanging behind him. “
Others with knowledge of the inner workings of Downing Street came to Cummings’ defense on Saturday.
A former Downing Street adviser told The Guardian Cummings that The Guardian Cummings’ departure would expose Johnson’s inability to lead.
“All these copycat ERGs [European Research Group] The emerging groups, the Northern Research Group, the Covid Research Group, are a symptom of non-existent party management.
“The contempt for MPs doesn’t come from Dominic Cummings, it’s just a tougher version of the smiling leader. The basic contempt comes from Boris Johnson. This is not a guy who works in the Commons tearooms, who fraternizes with other MPs. This is a guy who gets carried away by any storm; it has no political compass.
“Cummings was his ultimate human shield, the lightning rod for all hostility from Whitehall and the politicians, but the problem is Johnson’s leadership. He does not like to make decisions, he does not like to upset people, he barely had experience at the cabinet table before he became a leader, ”they said. “He is an outsider, a personality. You see very little of him building a base of support within the party. “
Theresa May’s former chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, told Radio 4’s Today show that Cummings and Cain’s departure was an opportunity for “more harmonious and effective” communications and “to rebuild relations with Conservative MPs, the parliamentary party. “. And, perhaps, to set a less confrontational and more unifying tone, perhaps more in tune with [Johnson’s] natural instincts. “
