Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings is set to leave the government by Christmas, according to reports.
The Vote Leave mastermind told the BBC that “rumours of me threatening to resign are invented”, after speculation he was set to stand down circled this week.
But he said that his “position hasn’t changed since my January blog” when he said he wanted to make himself “largely redundant” by the end of the year.
READ ‘Utterly nonsense’: Number 10 slams claims Boris Johnson will step down in six months
Government sources told the BBC that Cummings would be gone by Christmas.
Cummings’ impending exit will follow his former Vote Leave colleague Lee Cain who resigned as the Prime Minister’s head of communications this week after losing out in a Downing Street power struggle.
Cain had reportedly been offered a job as the Prime Minister’s chief of staff but the job offer reportedly sparked consternation among political opponents within the government and instead he ended up tendering his resignation.
Cain is set to step down in December and will be replaced as director of communications by James Slack — a former Daily Mail journalist and one of Johnson’s spokesmen.
Ex-journalist Allegra Stratton is set to take on a role presenting the government’s new daily televised press briefings.
Cummings was appointed as Johnson’s senior adviser when Johnson took the job as prime minister in 2019 and helped mastermind the successful 2019 election campaign.
He hit the headlines for the wrong reasons earlier this year after it emerged that in March he drove his family from London to Durham while suffering suspected Covid-19 symptoms at the height of the first national lockdown.
Johnson ignored calls to sack his chief aide who gave a bizarre press conference in the Rose Garden of Downing Street in May to defend his actions.
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