Saturday 24 April 2021

Cummings launches assault on Johnson

This blog has a link on the right hand side bar (2nd one down) to the blog of Dominic Cummings. Until yesterday, there has been no post since January 2020 when he chose to respond to No 10s briefing that he was responsible for leaking the Dyson/Johnson texts and also for another leak in 2020 about government lock down plans.  There are now newspaper headlines that Cummings has "declared war" on Johnson and that they are fighting like "rats in a sack."

The warnings that Johnson was given about Cummings in 2019 (see yesterday’s post) will no doubt be echoing through his mind because the key revelations are damaging ones. Not yet fatal perhaps but wounding nevertheless.

What Cummings alleges is that the prime minister was prepared to stop a cabinet office inquiry into last year’s leak because he had been told the leaker was Henry Newman, his adviser and Carrie Symonds’ “best friend” according to Johnson. Cummings, says he told the PM that was ‘mad’ and "totally unethical" (don't laugh).

He then hints about the financing of the refurbishment costs for his No 10 flat being paid for by party donors, again something he says he told the PM would be "unethical" as well as "foolish, possibly illegal and almost certainly broke the rules on proper disclosure of political donations if conducted in the way he intended."

Downing Street are saying the PM paid for the work himself but the Labour Party are asking more questions about who might have paid first and later reimbursed by Johnson when it leaked out.  See this tweet from Rachel Reeves:

Cummings ends his blog post with this:

"It is sad to see the PM and his office fall so far below the standards of competence and integrity the country deserves. I will not engage in media briefing regarding these issues but will answer questions about any of these issues to Parliament on 26 May for as long as the MPs want."

It is not as if either man was unaware of the others' failings, Cummings as a psychopath and Johnson as a manically disorganised idiot and congenital liar. Each thought the other would temporarily be useful.

Last week at PMQs, Johnson promised to publish the text messages between him and James Dyson, by the 'end of the day.'  This was then delayed to yesterday. But what we got was not the text messages but a summary of what happened written by civil servants (and probably some lawyers).

You can see it linked to in  Lewis Goodall's tweet:

I assume that means the original texts themselves are even more damaging. Dyson was apparently concerned about staff coming back to the UK to work on ventilators and being subject to more tax. It occurred to me when the story broke that what Johnson seemed to be promising was special treatment for Dyson employees, but this is not so apparently.

The summary claims as a result of Dyson's texts a temporary change to the Statutory Residence Test was made, to allow highly skilled individuals to work in the UK on COVID-19 related activity between 1 March 2020 and 1 June 2020 without affecting their residence status for tax purposes. 

The changes, it says. would have applied to any individual coming to the UK to work on COVID-19 related activity, in the medical professions and healthcare; engineering and manufacturing; and research and development. But it also says, the measure "did not exempt UK earnings from UK tax" so make of that what you will.

Later, Downing Street responded to Cummings' accusation against Carrie Symonds' best friend by saying, "The allegations against Henry Newman are entirely false. He wouldn’t be working in Downing Street if he was suspected of leaking information”

I’m not sure that counts as incontrovertible evidence he's innocent. Cummings has offered to let the cabinet Secretary search his phone for Dyson messages, so he must be pretty confident they won’t find any evidence he ever got the texts so Newman is still in the frame.

It’s ironic that Cummings is using phone data and offering to give evidence to a parliamentary committee. In the Barnard Castle saga he refused to reveal phone location data that would have proved he didn’t make a second trip and in March 2019 the Commons Select Committee of Privileges recommended the House issue an admonishment for contempt of Parliament after Cummings failed to appear before the DCMS Committee inquiry into claims of false news during the referendum campaign.

Finally, at the end of what looks like another bad day in Downing Street we got the news that Lord Lister (Steady Eddie) has left his role as the PM's envoy for the Gulf. Eddie Lister has been close to Johnson for years, way back to when he was mayor of London.  He was a trusted adviser.

It looks like there aren't that many more rats to leave the sleaze ridden hulk.

I don’t believe this will be the end of the matter and it’s far more more likely to be the opening of a long period of allegation and counter allegation and more examples of the incompetence and corruption surrounding Johnson. He was always the high risk candidate but it is all going disastrously wrong I'm very pleased to say.

I see suggestions every day that Gove is somehow behind it all and this may be right. But I wouldn’t underestimate Johnson’s ability to come through it, smooth everything over by promising Cummings something - a peerage perhaps - and surviving a few more years.  I hope I'm wrong.

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