BORIS Johnson personally phoned newspaper editors to brief them that Dominic Cummings leaked text messages to the media, according to reports.
Yesterday Number 10 sources accused the former adviser of leaking texts between James Dyson and Johnson to the media – prompting Cummings to write an explosive blog post attacking the Tory leader.
A source had told papers that Cummings was “engaged in systematic leaking” after messages revealed Dyson asked Johnson for a tax issue to be “fixed”. Several newspapers reported the allegations.
READ MORE: PM wanted to stop inquiry to protect fiancee's friend, Dominic Cummings claims
Cummings vehemently denied the accusations in his blog post, saying he was in possession of private messages between the pair but they related to “ventilators, bureaucracy and Covid policy – not tax issues”.
Sky News reported that the Prime Minister was in touch with newspapers himself regarding the story.
“Johnson didn’t need to pick this fight with Dominic Cummings,” Sam Coates said last night. “He’s more than 10 points ahead of Labour in the polls, he’s likely to do quite well in the May elections, there’s no single crisis at the top of the Government’s agenda.
“That was before Boris Johnson personally picked up the phone to newspaper editors yesterday to blame Dominic Cummings for leaking against his government. Clearly the subject of his former adviser niggles away at the Prime Minister, gets under his skin.”
READ MORE: Boris Johnson denies ‘mad’ attempt to block lockdown leak inquiry
In his blog, the former special adviser went on to accuse Johnson of wanting to halt an inquiry into the source of leaks around lockdown decisions, fearing it would implicate one of his fiancé Carrie Symonds’s friends.
Cummings wrote: “The Cabinet Secretary told the PM that the leak was neither me nor the then Director of Communications and that ‘all the evidence definitely leads to Henry Newman and others in that office, I’m just trying to get the communications data to prove it’.
“The PM was very upset about this. He said to me afterwards, ‘If Newman is confirmed as the leaker then I will have to fire him, and this will cause me very serious problems with Carrie as they’re best friends … [pause] perhaps we could get the Cabinet Secretary to stop the leak inquiry?’”
The controversial former adviser said he told Johnson that attempting to stop the inquiry would be “mad and totally unethical”.
Cummings added that Johnson knows he is not the source of the leaks and called for an “urgent Parliamentary inquiry into the Government’s conduct over the Covid crisis which ought to take evidence from all key players under oath and have access to documents”.
He also hit out at Johnson over renovations to the Downing Street flat where he lives with Symonds, saying his plans to have “donors secretly pay for the renovation were unethical, foolish, possibly illegal”.
Johnson later denied the claims, brushing them off and telling BBC the public do not “give a monkey’s” about such matters.
This morning former attorney general Dominic Grieve said Johnson must explain how the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat was paid for.
Grieve – a long-standing critic of Johnson – described the Prime Minister as a “vacuum of integrity” who must now come clean.
“It is all smoke and mirrors. He hasn’t said when he decided to repay it or whether he has now repaid it,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
“The fact is that he did get, I think it has become quite clear, a significant gift towards the refurbishment of the flat.
“If a minister goes abroad and gets given a gold watch by a foreign he has to hand it back to the Government or he has to buy it back. He doesn’t end up with £58,000 – if that’s figure – for refurbishing your private flat in Downing Street.
“My impression is there has been constant wriggling about the source of the money for this refurbishment.”
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