BORIS Johnson’s former chief adviser has described the Conservatives winning the 2019 General Election as a “heist” during an online row with Times writer Hugo Rifkind.
Dominic Cummings is continuing his attacks on the UK Government and the Prime Minister following his sit-down BBC interview with Laura Kuenssberg earlier this week.
Cummings’s former allies are not happy with him, with Sarah Vine saying the “Dom of old” would have thought the broadcast interview was an “act of spectacular idocy”.
The Daily Mail has compared the adviser to a “spurned lover”, as Conservatives take particular issue with Cummings’s admitting that he started plotting to oust Johnson just days after he secured an 80-seat majority at the election.
READ MORE: Dominic Cummings interview: Viewers struggle to side with former Vote Leave boss
Cummings was considered a closed book during his time in government and says he rarely spoke to the media, choosing largely to write his views on his blog.
But since leaving Number 10 last autumn and recently launching his Substack, which costs £10 a month to subscribe to, he has been speaking out against his former employer on a near-daily basis. He has attacked the UK's response to the pandemic in detail and taken aim at Whitehall processes and quality of staff.
On Twitter this morning former Vote Leave chief Cummings entered a new row, this time taking aim at journalists accusing him of using “lies and distortions” to win the 2016 Brexit referendum.
He had defended controversial actions taken by his campaign in the run-up to the vote, including claiming £350 million sent to the EU each week could be diverted to the NHS and that Turkey was going to join the EU.
Anne Applebaum, an Atlantic writer, accused the Leave campaign of “lying with impunity”.
“What Cummings really finds amusing is the fact that Remainers, because they were wedded to the idea of telling the truth, had trouble making their case,” she wrote.
A rattled Cummings replied within minutes: “No Anne, what I find darkly amusing is how 5 yrs later the Remain Establishment still bang on re 350/turkey instead of asking 'how did we call a referendum we didn't need to then blow it so badly?'. You're so convinced of your superior morals you're blind to what happened.”
When Rifkind jumped in to disagree, Cummings continues to criticise the Remain campaign led by former PM David Cameron.
He said had he and his colleagues known what they were doing, Vote Leave would never have been able to win the referendum using the £350m or Turkey claims.
“Remain cd/shd have won 60-40,” he insisted. “Extreme delusions + incompetence blew Remain up. Then they didnt learn & let us pull a similar heist in 2019.”
Much of the Tories 2019 election campaign was focused on the slogans “Get Brexit Done” and “oven-ready deal”. While the UK did indeed leave the EU following their victory, and agreed a deal, the UK has been pushing for key parts of it to be negotiated in recent weeks.
This week Brexit minister Lord Frost demanded that significant changes be made to the terms of the deal he negotiated as he said “we cannot go on as we are”.
But the EU has ruled out negotiating the deal, and called on the bloc to be “creative and flexible” within the Northern Ireland Protocol.
READ MORE: Brexit: What is the Northern Ireland Protocol and Article 16?
Rifkind criticised Cummings’s use of language like “heist” and “contest”.
“As if it was just about the victory, not the consequences,” the journalist told Cummings. “Their colossal failure was to assume the ref debate would be at least as responsible as our politics normally is. As opposed to far less. This was clearly naïve.”
The political adviser was taken aback at the description of Cameron and George Osborne as responsible. “Listen to yourself!” he fumed. “Until you guys drop the idea you're morally superior you'll never figure out what happened, just keep living your fairy tales.”
During his sit down interview with Kuenssberg, Cummings smirked through discussion of the £350m claim and joked that it “drove everyone crazy”.
He defended the campaign, telling the BBC political editor: “The reason why that figure worked and the reason why it drove everyone crazy and the reason why people are still talking about it now is that we were using true figures.”
Later on Substack, explaining his rationale for agreeing to the wide-ranging discussion, Cummings said he agreed to an interview with BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg “in early 2016” and that he “had to keep the promise”.
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