Dominic Cummings has launched a fresh assault on Boris Johnson as he claimed his former boss is ‘completely shot’ – although he doubted whether the Prime Minister would be replaced by ‘rotten’ Tory MPs.
The former Number 10 aide has waged a bitter campaign against Mr Johnson since leaving Downing Street in late 2020.
He delivered his latest attack as speculation mounts the PM could face a crunch vote on his future as early as next week.
Mr Johnson has been warned by Tory grandees he is ‘in real trouble’ as the fallout from the Partygate scandal continues.
A steady trickle of no-confidence letters continues to be submitted by disgruntled Conservative MPs.
A total of 54 letters from Tory MPs are needed before Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, calls a confidence vote in Mr Johnson’s leadership.
However, Mr Cummings cast doubt on whether the Conservative Party would actually oust the PM, as he suggested they ‘can’t think of anyone better than Boris’.
The ex-Downing Street chief adviser delivered a withering verdict on the two Cabinet ministers who have previously been touted as the most likely successors to Mr Johnson – Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
Mr Cummings claimed Mr Sunak was ‘out of the running’ after he ‘blew himself up’ following a row over his family’s tax affairs.
And he branded Ms Truss ‘about as close to properly crackers as anybody I’ve met in Parliament’.
The former Vote Leave boss also continued his bitter feud with the PM’s wife, Carrie Johnson, as he accused her of ‘causing chaos’.
But he claimed Mrs Johnson ‘can’t be happy with the situation now’ as ‘it’s all blowing up in her face’.
The renewed speculation about the PM’s political future follows last week’s publication of Sue Gray’s report into Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street.
The senior civil servant concluded in her report that it was ‘not appropriate or proportionate’ to look further into allegations of a party in the PM’s private flat – at which it has been claimed ABBA music was played – on the night Mr Cummings left Downing Street on 13 November, 2020.
Ms Gray revealed she took this decision once the Metropolitan Police’s own probe into Partygate ended.
But Mr Cummings, in an interview with the UnHerd website, branded Ms Gray’s report ‘brazen’ and claimed the alleged gathering in the flat could be heard by ‘dozens of people’ downstairs in No10.
‘All the police had to do was interview any one of them to find out,’ he said.
‘You don’t have a work meeting, at the top of Number 10, where the music is so loud that you can hear it in the f****** press office.’
Mr Cummings suggested the continuing Partygate scandal had left the PM ‘completely shot’ but predicted Mr Johnson would not be leaving No10 soon.
He said: ‘The Tory party itself is quite rotten now and the sign of that is that they can’t think of anyone better than Boris, who’s clearly just completely shot.
‘They are collectively saying, “if we get rid of him, we might get somebody worse”. It says a lot about the state of the Tory party. And they actually could get somebody worse: Liz Truss would be even worse than Boris.
‘She’s about as close to properly crackers as anybody I’ve met in Parliament.’
As well as his attack on Ms Truss, who is viewed as a likely leading candidate in any contest to succeed Mr Johnson, Mr Cummings also gave little chance of Mr Sunak replacing the PM.
‘The fact that Rishi blew himself up makes it much more likely that Boris will somehow survive,’ he added.
‘I don’t want to say “no chance”, but I think Rishi is out of the running.’
The former aide also continued his feud with Mrs Johnson, who he accused of ‘sort of injecting more craziness into the whole situation’ in Downing Street under Mr Johnson.
But he added: ‘She can’t be happy with the situation now. Obviously it’s all blowing up in her face.’