Dominic Cummings orchestrated the referendum vote on Brexit and Johnson’s election candidacy for 2019 (FILE)
London:
Dominic Cummings, one of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s most powerful advisers, will step down from his post in the heart of Downing Street when Brexit is over later this year, after an internal battle over who should be chief of staff by Johnson.
Cummings, who orchestrated the 2016 Brexit referendum vote and Johnson’s 2019 election candidacy, told the BBC his position had not changed since January, when he said he wanted to be largely redundant by the end of this year.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told Sky that Cummings planned not to stay in his post as Johnson’s senior adviser for well over a year, after Britain left its informal membership in the ‘European Union.
As he wrote at the start of the year in his own words, he planned to make himself largely redundant this year with the big thing he had been working on, of course, which was ending Brexit at the end of the period. transition which is Dec. 31, ”Shapps said.
The exit of one of Johnson’s closest allies marks one of the most significant changes in the Prime Minister’s inner circle to date: Cummings has been cast by part of Johnson’s “brain” – a figure who has exerted significant influence.
A committed Brexiteer who despised the British political establishment and threw beards at journalists and cabinet ministers, Cummings was cast in the satirical puppet show Spitting Image as an alien who has repeatedly threatened Johnson with resignation – and has sometimes asked to eat her child.
The BBC quoted an unidentified Downing Street source as saying Cummings would be “out of government” at Christmas. Another unidentified source told the BBC that Cummings “jumped because otherwise he would be pushed soon.”
Cummings told the BBC that “rumors that I threatened to quit are made up, rumors that I ask others to quit are made up.”
Shapps said Cummings would be missed because it was good to have someone in government to shake things up.
As Johnson negotiates the final stages of a Brexit trade deal and grapples with a second wave of the novel coronavirus outbreak, Downing Street has been gripped by an internal battle over who should become Johnson’s chief of staff.
Johnson’s communications director, Lee Cain, resigned on Wednesday. Cain, another Brexit supporter, was a close ally of Cummings and worked with him during the Vote Leave campaign.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
