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Dominic Cummings revolts against Boris Johnson and reveals alleged illegalities in Downing Street

2021-04-24T18:08:36.299Z


The Brexit ideologue and former advisor to the British politician accuses him of trying to stop an internal investigation


The ghosts of Brexit return from the past to haunt Boris Johnson.

The ideologue of the campaign to leave the United Kingdom, Dominic Cummings, who the Prime Minister hired as an adviser when entering Downing Street, has decided to take revenge on his former boss with a bomb statement in which he accuses the politician of alleged illegalities and of try to stop an investigation within the government.

Johnson made the "mistake" on Thursday of pointing directly to Cummings as responsible for the leak of the text messages exchanged between the prime minister and businessman James Dyson. The inventor of the revolutionary vacuum cleaners that bear his name offered to build, at the beginning of the pandemic, the artificial respirators that British health care urgently needed. But he demanded from his friend, whose personal cell phone he had, that neither the company nor the workers be taxed. Dyson, an ardent Brexit advocate, had already moved its production and headquarters to Singapore. "I'll fix it," Johnson replied. The message scandal prompted the Labor opposition to demand a parliamentary inquiry, but Downing Street simply launched an internal inquiry. When hours later,a government spokesman told the media directly that the prime minister was convinced that Cummings was behind the leak, the thunderbox exploded. Johnson's former adviser, a man as smart and brilliant as he is confrontational, abruptly left Downing Street last November after a series of clashes with the prime minister's partner, Carrie Symonds. Since then, he had been silent.Since then, he had been silent.Since then, he had been silent.

In a statement made public on his personal blog, Cummings acknowledges that Johnson forwarded part of the messages he exchanged with Dyson, but that none of them were the ones that have been published now. His pent-up anger, however, has led him to elaborate on a series of accusations that put the prime minister in a compromising position. In the first place, the former adviser refers to another leak that at the time was very compromising for the Government. Last October,

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He announced that Downing Street was preparing to impose a second lockdown on the British population. It was the recognition of a failure in the management of the pandemic that was going to fall like a blow to a frightened citizenry. "All the evidence indicated that the person responsible was Henry Newman [special adviser in Johnson's Cabinet] and others in his office," says Cummings the senior official in charge of the investigation told him. “The prime minister was very angry with this finding, and he said to me shortly after: 'If Newman is the leaker I will have to fire him, and this will cause me a lot of problems with Carrie, because they are very good friends. Perhaps we can ask the Secretary of the Cabinet to put an end to this investigation? ”Cummings accuses Johnson in his text.

A definitive conclusion from these internal investigations was never made public. Downing Street and Johnson himself simply made it clear to the press that neither Cummings, nor his assistant Lee Cain, had had anything to do with the matter. An outcome with which the prime minister wanted to settle the mess, but which left a bad taste in the mouth of his controversial adviser.

And there is more. Cummings reveals in his statement his contempt for the lack of professionalism with which things were being done in the Government. Remember the episode of the redecoration of Johnson's private apartment, a personal endeavor of his partner, Symonds, for which a special foundation was created, similar to the one that operates in the US White House. The purpose was to dress in an appearance of preservation of historic buildings which was simply a way of collecting donations from friendly businessmen to furnish the prime minister's house. “I told him that his plans to obtain secret donors for the redecoration [of the apartment] were unethical, stupid, possibly illegal, and that they broke all existing rules regarding transparency of political donations, if he insisted on doing so. ”,Cummings explains on his blog.

Downing Street tried at the time to fix the fiasco with a public statement that Johnson had paid for all the renovations out of his own pocket.

The former adviser assures that he will not speak to the press to give more details of his accusations, but that he is more than willing to appear before Parliament to answer all the questions that the deputies want to ask him.

"It is sad to see how low the prime minister and his team have fallen when it comes to the levels of competence and integrity that this country deserves," concludes Cummings.

The number two of the Labor Party, Angela Rayner, reacted to the new revelations harshly: “The Government has been stumbling for 24 hours between cover-up attempts and botched jobs.

Conservatives are fighting each other like rats in a sack, and slipping more and more into a sordid quagmire.

In this way they show a heartbreaking contempt for the country ”.

In recent hours, Downing Street has been unable to offer a response to Cummings' allegations.


Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-04-24

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