Downing Street feud requires answers

When briefing against a political opponent, make sure the claims are watertight — and do not risk blowing up in your face. The departure of Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings last November offered a chance to end Downing Street feuding and reboot his government. Accusations from prime ministerial aides that Cummings leaked text messages from Johnson to the industrialist Sir James Dyson have provoked a counter-attack from the ex-adviser that has reignited the civil war. Given longstanding questions over the government’s coronavirus handling — and Johnson’s integrity — the furore may yet do serious damage.

Cummings has limited claim to the moral high ground. This is a man who built the campaign to exit the EU around a string of canards, notably that Brexit would release £350m a week to be spent instead on the NHS. After bending lockdown rules beyond breaking point last year, he claimed to have driven 25 miles to a County Durham beauty spot to “test his eyesight” after Covid symptoms.

While Cummings is a gifted campaigner with a quick mind, he was never suited to running the prime minister’s office. That Johnson ever appointed him raises questions over his character judgment. Using aggressive and unorthodox methods that included the prime minister stretching constitutional norms, Cummings did help Johnson to “get Brexit done” and win an electoral landslide. The prime minister should have discharged him then, with thanks. Instead, the adviser survived for another 11 months.

Of the accusations now facing Johnson, many voters will find it hard to get agitated over his texts to an inventor and entrepreneur who had been asked to build urgently-needed ventilators — even if these related to tax questions. In the heat of a global pandemic, many will conclude, needs must. Yet after revelations over the energetic lobbying of ministers by ex-premier David Cameron on behalf of Greensill Capital, a firm in which he had a potentially lucrative financial interest, the disclosures will reinforce impressions of sleaze and cronyism surrounding this government.

The claim that Johnson suggested ending an inquiry into who leaked plans for a second coronavirus lockdown because it threatened to produce an inconvenient conclusion is a serious one. It should form part of a comprehensive public inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic, and why the UK still has one of the highest death rates per capita among large economies. If cases continue to fall — helped by the government’s one big Covid-19 success, the vaccination programme — an inquiry should be launched by the summer.

More immediately, Johnson needs to provide detail on the origin of funds to refurbish his Downing Street flat. Officials and ministers have insisted the prime minister paid from his own pocket, but declined to say if he was lent the money. Cummings alleges plans to have donors secretly pay for the renovation were “unethical, foolish, [and] possibly illegal”. Dominic Grieve, a former attorney-general, says they suggest Johnson is a “vacuum of integrity”. That is a weighty charge. It deserves a full answer.