Dominic Cummings claims that he looked into replacing Boris Johnson as Prime Minister only weeks after helping him to secure a 80-seat majority at the 2019 election
The former Downing Street adviser made the explosive revelation in an interview with the BBC, due to be aired at 7pm tonight.
Mr Cummings also laid bare the extent of the fractious relationship between former Vote Leave officials and Mr Johnson’s now-wife, Carrie Johnson only weeks after the landslide win.
Mr Cummings – who ran the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 EU referendum campaign before working as the prime minister's adviser – said: “Before even mid-January we were having meetings in Number 10 saying it’s clear that Carrie (Johnson) wants rid of all of us.
“At that point we were already saying by the summer either we’ll all have gone from here or we’ll be in the process of trying to get rid of him and get someone else in as Prime Minister.”
He added: “(Mr Johnson) doesn’t have a plan, he doesn’t know how to be Prime Minister and we only got him in there because we had to solve a certain problem not because he was the right person to be running the country.”
Mr Cummings claimed that in 2019, ahead of the election, Mrs Johnson was happy to have Vote Leave officials working in Downing Street, but this later changed.
He said: “As soon as the election was won her view was, ‘why should it be Dominic and the Vote Leave team?’ Why shouldn’t it be me that’s pulling the strings?'”
Mr Cummings said he had not spoken to the prime minister since he resigned last autumn.
His full interview with BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg airs at 7pm on BBC2 tonight (Tuesday).
