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UK Environment Secretary George Eustice has denied that the departure of Dominic Cummings, one of the architects of Vote Leave, has any impact on the Brexit negotiations.
As the Brexit deal deadline nears, Eustice tried to downplay Cummings’ departure from No. 10 arguing that it would not disrupt discussions with Brussels, as the UK negotiations are led by David Frost.
It comes after Downing Street was rocked this week by the departure of Boris Johnson’s top adviser and his communications director, Lee Cain, another Vote Leave veteran, who lost in a power struggle involving the fiancee of Boris Johnson, Carrie Symonds.
With Brexit talks set to resume this week ahead of an EU summit on Thursday seen in Brussels as a deadline for a draft deal, Eustice was questioned about whether it was easier to strike a trade deal with the EU without Cummings.
Eustice told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “The negotiations have been led by David Frost from the beginning. You have a team of very talented and experienced technical experts around you.
“He has led these negotiations from the beginning and obviously remains and continues to do so. So I don’t really think Dominic Cummings’ departure will have a particular impact on the negotiations, as Lord Frost has been leading them. “
Amid reports of counter-reports between warring factions in issue 10, Eustice was pressed on whether the prime minister should take responsibility for his staff “stripping each other.”
Eustice said: “I have known Dominic Cummings for many years. It has many strengths and one of them is winning campaigns. And it tends to apply in short bursts, short terms of service, in big strategic shifts like the result of the 2016 referendum, like the 2019 general election.
“And he’s very talented at it. But look, it is always the prime minister’s prerogative who his key advisers will be. The prime minister must have a team around him that he is comfortable with, that works well to strike the right balance. And it is always the case that prime ministers can change their advisers and change the mix of their advisers. “
Meanwhile, former Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown painted a complex picture of splits within the Conservative Party. “Well, you have 27,000 new [Covid] cases yesterday, 500 deaths, there are a million young people looking for work, there are people with no savings planning Christmas, “he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr program.
“Really, we shouldn’t be in this faction fight right now. And I don’t see the end of this factional struggle because you have a soft Brexit faction, a hard Brexit faction, a libertarian faction in relation to health restrictions, a community faction, a northern faction that wants to spend on the rise, a southern faction that wants spending cuts, you have a payback faction and a centralization faction.
“This is not simply a dysfunctional Downing Street problem, this is a dysfunctional UK and we will really need a root and branch constitutional review to bring people together at a later stage.”
When asked if he thought Cummings’ departure would have an effect on the way the government handles trade negotiations, Brown said: “I think the arrival of Joe Biden has made a difference.
“I see that a commercial agreement will come very soon. The government simply cannot afford to be at war with the United States on the one hand and Europe on the other at the start of the new year. So if the [Johnson] it does not change its internal market bill, it is at war with the United States, if it does not get an agreement with Europe, it is at war with Europe. I think he has already made the decision that he is going to reach an agreement and I think there will be an agreement soon. “
