Dominic Cummings was criticised by one of Matt Hancock’s aides in an expletive-laden WhatsApp tirade, according to new leaked messages.
The messages are among the latest set of WhatsApp correspondence to emerge from the leak of more than 100,000 messages by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott to the Daily Telegraph.
The conversations published by the Telegraph show the animosity towards Cummings from Hancock and his team, who felt betrayed after the then health secretary had publicly backed Cummings over the controversy surrounding his lockdown drive to Barnard Castle.
The government was forced to defend Cummings after he drove to the County Durham town during the first coronavirus lockdown.
Cummings described the Department of Health and Social Care as a “smoking ruin” in evidence to a parliamentary committee on 17 March 2021, four months after he had been forced out of Downing Street as Boris Johnson’s chief adviser.
In response to a message from Hancock on that day asking: “How would you deal with this Cummings crap?” One of Hancock’s advisers, Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, responded: “What a fucking piece of shit. You went out and backed him over Barnard Castle and he responds by briefing against you relentlessly in private and now in public.”
He added: “He’s a psychotherapist,” before swiftly correcting himself: “Psychopath.”
Hancock went on to complain: “But sometimes I think we pull punches too often. Why should I take this crap lying down?”
In another set of messages from 26 May 2021 – the day Cummings gave testimony to parliament that “tens of thousands of people” had died needlessly because of the government’s handling of the pandemic – Hancock suggested Cummings was only testifying to secure a job in a future Rishi Sunak government.
He said: “Of all the bonkersness about Dom’s circus, the one I enjoy most is that he’s doing this to secure his place at the heart of a future Sunak administration.”
Sunak replied: “Ha! Ironic given I haven’t spoken to him since he left!”
In a later message, Sunak, who was chancellor at the time, described the time Cummings was chief adviser to Downing Street as “a nightmare I hope we never ever have to repeat”.
On the same day, Hancock made a reference to Cummings’ widely ridiculed claim that he had driven to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight, saying: “His insight is no better than his eyesight.”
A year earlier, in May 2020, Hancock requested that Njoku-Goodwin “draft a supportive tweet” in response to calls for Cummings’ resignation over his lockdown drive. He then sent some draft words to his adviser to post on Twitter: “Dom Cummings was right today transparently to set out in full detail how he made his decision in very difficult circumstances. Now we must move on, fight this dreadful disease and get our country back on her feet.”
The next day, Njoku-Goodwin told Hancock that the tweet in support of Cummings had gone down well with “people in the building”, meaning No 10. He said: “Lee was literally talking about promotion in the next reshuffle,” referring to Lee Cain, Boris Johnson’s then director of communications and one of his closest advisers at the time.
