Inside Boris’s first cabinet: How the new PM scorned May’s government as being like a group of floundering students trying to sound clever
- PM Boris Johnson compared Mrs May’s Cabinet meetings to ‘university seminars’
- He also took aim at Brexit naysayers such as former Chancellor Philip Hammond
- Mr Johnson opened his first Cabinet meeting as Prime Minister with the remarks
- He tasked his team with ‘getting Brexit off the front pages of the newspapers’
Boris Johnson opened his first Cabinet meeting with an astonishing attack on Theresa May’s Government – comparing it to a group of floundering students trying to sound clever, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The new Prime Minister used the inaugural gathering of his top team to compare the previous meetings under Mrs May to pointless university seminars in which people ‘felt that they had to say something but struggled to come up with anything meaningful’.
The broadside marked the beginning of an extraordinary 11 days that have seen Mr Johnson and his chief enforcer Dominic Cummings rip up the usual Whitehall power structures and Downing Street operation to achieve their ultimate goal of a new deal with Brussels.
Although he praised each member of his new team as brilliant, Mr Johnson warned that none of them was indispensable in his mission to leave the EU on Halloween, with or without a deal. The Cabinet are pictured above
Brexit decision-making has been wrestled from the 33-strong Cabinet, and instead moved to a core of half a dozen powerful Ministers, with the rest told to talk about anything else but the UK’s EU exit.
Mr Johnson vowed he would use his weekly Cabinet meeting on a Tuesday morning only to discuss ‘big policy issues that are meaningful to the people of the UK’.
And in a major hint of a looming Election, he warned his team only had a ‘few months’ and to make the most of the time they had to ‘populate the political landscape’ with more interesting policies than Europe.
He tasked them with ‘getting Brexit off the front pages of the newspapers’ and demanded they stop using the ‘unhelpful’ expression No Deal, and instead replace it with language about being prepared, ‘focusing on order rather than disorder’.
Not content with attacking his predecessor, he also took aim at gloomy Brexit naysayers such as former Chancellor Philip Hammond – now licking his wounds on the backbenches – who regarded leaving the EU at the end of October as an ‘adverse weather event’.
The new Prime Minister used the inaugural gathering of his top team to compare the previous meetings under Mrs May to pointless university seminars in which people ‘felt that they had to say something but struggled to come up with anything meaningful’
Having served in Mrs May’s Cabinet for two years, Mr Johnson’s withering assessment of his Conservative colleague stunned those present at the meeting. One Minister said: ‘In no uncertain terms, change has come.’
Another source said: ‘Theresa used to go around the table pretending to care what people said and then go and do what she wanted anyway. There’s none of that any more.
‘The message was, basically, if you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t bother.’
The meeting finished ten minutes earlier than usual, they added.
Although he praised each member of his new team as brilliant, Mr Johnson warned that none of them was indispensable in his mission to leave the EU on Halloween, with or without a deal.
Vowing to close down the leaks that blighted Mrs May’s Government, the Prime Minister told his newly appointed Ministers ‘what is said in this room stays in this room’ and he would be ruthless with anyone who broke the Cabinet omerta with a ‘one strike and you are out’ rule.
He added that while he would be disappointed to see any of his appointments sacked, he would not flinch at kicking them out and hoped his words were not a ‘forlorn plea’.
Mr Cummings, the architect of Vote Leave’s stunning 2016 victory, who was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a referendum drama, has littered Downing Street with countdown clocks to October 31 to hammer home the urgency
The irony that his warning has leaked to this newspaper will not be lost on the nascent Downing Street administration – but there has been a marked escalation in discipline enforcement.
Mr Johnson has wasted no time stamping his authority on the Cabinet and Whitehall with the help of his senior adviser Dominic Cummings, who has sidelined chief of staff Sir Edward Lister.
On Friday night, Mr Cummings launched a stark warning of his own that any Minister who stepped out of line by going off message will be ‘slapped down’ by No 10.
Gathering Government special advisers for their weekly meeting, he told them that the urgency of the Brexit mission meant ‘they do not have time to defend this s**t’ and he would brutally make clear that Ministers who go off message do not speak for the Government.
He pointed to Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, who earned a stinging public rebuke on Wednesday after making unscripted comments about anonymity for rape suspects.
Mr Cummings, the architect of Vote Leave’s stunning 2016 victory, who was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a referendum drama, has littered Downing Street with countdown clocks to October 31 to hammer home the urgency.
One looks down at the Prime Minister from the grand marble mantelpiece in his study, next to the portrait of Mr Johnson’s hero Sir Winston Churchill, while Mr Cummings’ own is a mere makeshift whiteboard.
And in order to psychologically ram home the significance of No Deal planning, meetings have been moved to Cobra, the national security hub at the centre of the Cabinet Office.
Good cop, bad cop act of PM and his enforcer
By Harry Cole
The ‘good cop, bad cop’ leadership style of the Prime Minister and Dominic Cummings also extends to their dealings with the Civil Service.
Boris Johnson told a gathering of the so-called ‘Top 200’ mandarins on Wednesday that he did not blame them for the failure to exit the European Union in March.
The meeting had to take place in the Treasury to accommodate the 120 officials who showed up.
One source described a ‘love-bombing’ strategy that included gushing remarks and fulsome pleas that, with their help, Mr Johnson can achieve a ‘backstopectomy’ in talks with Brussels that would get Brexit through Parliament before crashing out without a deal at the end of October.
The typical Johnson turn of phrase amused attendees, but there were bigger smiles after they were told they were still allowed to go on holiday this month as long as they kept their teams properly staffed.
However, there is bad blood in Downing Street after senior civil servant Alex Aiken arrived at work on Monday to find that his desk had disappeared from the centre of operations.
The head of all Government communications was moved over the weekend to a different part of the building by Mr Cummings with no warning – and the extraordinary snub has not gone down well.
And after years of whispering around Theresa May, officials say now ‘every single word seems to be f*** this or f*** that’ from the top down of the new regime.
However, they admit that at the same time as the dramatic increase in tempo, there has been ‘more laughter in this building in the last two weeks than there has been in the last two years’.
With lengthy minutes of meetings axed to keep a tighter rein on information seeping out of No 10, the stark realities of a disorderly departure are instead displayed on big screens.
In a snub to the Civil Service, Mr Cummings has also dramatically increased the number of taxpayer-funded special advisers, with some Ministers allowed to appoint four so-called ‘Spads’, while No 10 has close to 30.
These political operatives are able to by-pass the usual rules of Whitehall impartiality, with Mr Cummings demanding their personal loyalty to Mr Johnson rather than their Ministers.
Any concern that this will send the cost to the public purse soaring has been greeted with a cold-eyed declaration that ‘this is a time of national crisis’.
Sources say Mr Cummings has also put Downing Street on a permanent campaign footing.
Aides are expected to be ready for a 6.10am call after the first round of headlines on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. There is then a core meeting at 8am, with Mr Johnson joining at 8.30am. Another compulsory staff meeting is convened at 7pm.
One insider, who also worked for Mrs May, said: ‘If they had been at this tempo before we would have got a heck of a lot more done.’
Mr Cummings warned aides on Friday that ‘Europe will not row back until it is virtually too late’, with Mr Johnson’s administration braced for an extraordinary showdown next month with both Parliament and Brussels.
‘Steel yourselves,’ he urged his large new team. ‘Steel yourselves.’
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