Dominic Cummings branded the Cabinet “useless” and Matt Hancock a “proven liar” in a foul-mouthed message to Prime Minister Boris Johnson during the pandemic, the Covid Inquiry has heard.
Mr Cummings issued an apology for his language as he began giving evidence on Tuesday to the Covid-19 Inquiry about preparations for the pandemic and his role as one of Johnson’s closest aides within Downing Street.
Newly-released WhatsApp messages from August 2020 show Mr Cummings was calling for a Cabinet reshuffle and when it should take place. “At the moment the bubble thinks youve taken your eye off ball, you’re happy to have useless f***pigsin charge, and they think that a vast amount of the chaotic news on the front pages is coming from no10 when in fact it’s coming from the Cabinet who are feral – if you maintain your approach of last few months, your authority will be severely weakened and you will lose good people cos they dont want to be part of something that looks like mayhem.”Mr Cummings added: “I also must stress I think leaving Hancock in post is a big mistake – he is a proven liar who nobody believes or shd (sic) believe on anything, and we face going into autumn crisis with the c*** in charge of NHS still.”
At the start of his evidence, Mr Cummings said “I apologise” when confronted with the "appalling" language,described by lead counsel to the inquiry Hugo Keith KC as “coarse”. “I think I was reflecting a widespread view amongst competent people at the centre of power at the time about the calibre of a lot of senior people who were dealing with this crisis extremely badly”, said Mr Cummings, adding that his “judgment of a lot of senior people was widespread”.
The political operative described the Cabinet Office as a “bomb site” and a “dumpster fire” when he entered Downing Street, and insisted there were “a lot of the wrong people in the wrong job”. “The Cabinet Office over a long period of time has accumulated more and more power, formal and informal”, he said.
“It’s become incredibly bloated. It’s acquired huge numbers of people, huge numbers of teams. And particularly on the whole, the sort of deep state, national security side, crisis management, has become in all sorts of ways extremely opaque and effectively completely invisible to any political figure, including the prime minister.“So it was extremely difficult to know in Number 10 who exactly in the Cabinet Office was doing what, whose responsibility it was, who were we supposed to talk to to get action and that was critical, particularly in the first couple of months (of the pandemic).”Lee Cain, a key Cummings ally who was director of communications in Downing Street at the start of the pandemic, was earlier quizzed about the “rude, dismissive, and aggressive” tone adopted by Mr Cummings. Asked if there was a “macho culture”, he replied: “There’s a problem within Mr Johnson’s senior team, there was a lack of diversity in gender, socio-economic, minorities.
“If you lack that diversity, you create a problem in making decisions, policy development, and culture.
“Fundamentally Number 10 is a direct reflection of the principle and I think that’s probably the case here.”
Both Mr Cummings and Mr Cain were forced out in November 2020, after a spectacular falling out at the heart of government.
