DOMINIC Cummings, the Prime Minister’s controversial senior adviser whose infamous lockdown drive to the North East caused fury, is to leave his role at Downing Street by the end of the year.
Calls for Mr Cummings to resign go back to the trip he made during the UK’s first lockdown back in May, when he drove with his family from London to the North East, then made a 30-mile drive to Barnard Castle, claiming he was testing his eyesight to ensure he was fit to drive back south.
Afterwards, at a press conference in the rose garden at Downing Street, his failure to apologise angered many people.
Mr Cummings says he always intended to depart at the end of the year, and had forecast that in a blog he wrote in January, but commentators suspect his real reason is because he lot out in a power struggle among the Prime Minister’s inner circle.
Lee Cain, the director of communications and an ally of Mr Cummings, has also stood down after reports of tensions at No 10, prompting speculation that Mr Cummings would soon follow suit.
Both Mr Cain and Mr Cummings have worked with each other for a long time, most notably during the 2016 EU referendum, on the Vote Leave campaign.
Mr Cummings told the BBC: “Rumours of me threatening to resign are invented”, after the growing speculation this week.
He added that he wanted to make himself “largely redundant” by the end of 2020.
Mr Cummings told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg that he had indicated that he had set out his own plans to exit close to a year ago.
With both men at the heart of Boris Johnson’s Brexit co-ordinators, could this be a signal that Downing Street is about to re-invent its political style of approach in time for the new year?