Dominic Cummings: Eight takeaways from his interview

Dominic Cummings has given BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg his first main TV interview.

So what had been the principle claims made by the prime minister’s former chief aide about his time in Downing Avenue and operating the Vote Depart marketing campaign within the EU referendum?

With Covid charges rising final autumn, there was a debate inside authorities about whether or not a second lockdown was wanted in England.

Mr Cummings says Boris Johnson was extremely against new restrictions, which Labour was calling for by mid-October.

He claims the PM despatched him a WhatsApp message on 15 October, arguing that most individuals who had been dying had been of their 80s.

“That’s above life expectancy. So get Covid and Reside longer,” he allegedly wrote, including: “And I not purchase all this NHS overwhelmed stuff. People, I feel we could have to recalibrate.”

However the authorities says it has taken the “crucial motion to guard lives and livelihoods, guided by one of the best scientific recommendation” all through the pandemic.

Dominic Cummings: The Interview shall be broadcast within the UK on BBC Two at 19:00 BST on Tuesday, and it is going to be accessible on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds

Early within the pandemic, in response to Mr Cummings, Mr Johnson wished to maintain going to his weekly one-to-one conferences with the Queen in individual.

However, on 18 March final yr, he provides, Mr Cummings warned the PM that the then 93-year-old monarch can be susceptible to dying if she caught coronavirus.

“That is fully insane,” he says he instructed Mr Johnson, who, he provides, then modified his thoughts.

Downing Avenue denies that this incident passed off.

After his highway journey to County Durham throughout lockdown final yr was uncovered, Mr Cummings confronted the media within the Downing Avenue rose backyard. He mentioned he had made the journey to his mother and father’ farm after his spouse fell sick.

However he tells the BBC, there have been additionally “safety issues” surrounding his household house in London that he didn’t reveal when he answered questions.

Referring to the press convention, he says: “What I ought to have achieved is both simply resigned and mentioned nothing about something, or I ought to have spoken to my household and mentioned, ‘Hear, we’re simply going to have to return clear about the entire thing’.”

Dominic Cummings has been portrayed because the brains behind Vote Depart’s victory within the 2016 EU referendum. Benedict Cumberbatch even performed him as a unusual near-genius within the Channel Four drama Brexit: The Uncivil Battle, arising with slogans like “Take again management” that struck a chord with tens of millions of voters.

However, Mr Cummings tells the BBC that anybody who says they’re certain, 5 years after the end result, that Brexit is an efficient factor should “have a screw free”.

Nevertheless, he provides: “Clearly I feel Brexit was a great factor.”

Mr Johnson has mentioned that Brexit will enable the UK to “take again management of our legal guidelines and our future” and permit the nation to hunt commerce offers with the broader world.

Within the interview, Mr Cummings claims Carrie Symonds wished to eliminate him and different former Vote Depart workers who had been working in Downing Avenue.

Earlier than the 2019 basic election, he claims, Ms Symonds believed her fiancé wanted Mr Cummings and the previous Vote Depart staff to win, however “as quickly because the election was gained” her view turned “Why should not or not it’s me that is pulling the strings?”

“The state of affairs we discovered ourselves in is that, inside days, [we] had been in a state of affairs the place the prime minister’s girlfriend is attempting to eliminate us and appoint full clowns to sure key jobs,” he says.

A Downing Avenue spokesperson says: “Political appointments are fully made by the prime minister.”

Inside days of the Conservatives successful the 2019 basic election, Mr Cummings says, he started speaking to his allies inside Downing Avenue about ousting Boris Johnson.

“We had been already saying, ‘By the summer time both we’ll all have gone from right here, or we’ll be within the means of attempting to eliminate him and get another person in as prime minister,'” he provides.

“He would not have a plan, he would not know the best way to be prime minister and we solely obtained him in there as a result of we needed to remedy a sure downside not as a result of he was the precise individual to be operating the nation.”

As soon as Boris Johnson’s most senior adviser – on the very coronary heart of No 10 – Dominic Cummings says he hasn’t spoken to his ex-boss since he stop Downing Avenue.

The PM, he provides, tried to get in contact by cellphone after he stop, however he did not reply.

It doesn’t “hassle me come what may” whether or not they communicate once more, he claims.

Portraying himself as somebody who wished to reform authorities and was opposed by the “institution”, Mr Cummings says he wasn’t afraid to upset individuals to get issues achieved.

Folks considered him “typically as a nightmare”, he says.

“In case you are airing huge tough issues, it may be upsetting for lots of people… Lots of people have a pop at me, however you do not see me crying about it.”

Mr Cummings – challenged repeatedly all through the BBC interview to again up his model of occasions – says a lot of his claims shall be corroborated if there’s a public inquiry into the federal government’s dealing with of the Covid disaster.