Boris Johnson’s bid to reset his Government was being destabilised on Tuesday after Dominic Cummings launched a Twitter offensive against new communications chief Guto Harri over his lobbying work for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.
In a series of comments posted online late on Monday night and early this morning, Mr Cummings accused No 10 of lying over Mr Harri’s security clearance and called for Labour to press the Government’s top civil servant Simon Case to open an investigation.
Mr Harri was appointed as the Prime Minister’s director of communications on Saturday as part of a wider Downing Street shake-up.
No 10 has insisted “anyone coming in has to go through requisite checks”.
Multiple sources have confirmed to the Standard that Mr Harri was involved in a Zoom meeting with Mr Johnson’s former chief-of-staff Lord Udny-Lister in June 2020 to discuss Huawei while he was working for the PR firm Hawthorn, which had been hired by the Chinese tech giant.
According to The Sun, Mr Harri asked Lord Udny-Lister which ministers he could “nudge” for help.
Lord Udny-Lister was quoted by The Times as saying: “It didn’t change anything.” The Government later reversed a decision to allow Huawei access to the UK’s 5G mobile network amid security fears. Huawei declined to comment.
