Lee Cain was the loyal Boris Johnson adviser who chose to resign just as it looked like he might become the prime minister’s chief of staff. While his friend and ally Dominic Cummings dominates Whitehall, the 39-year-old Downing Street director of communications had remained resolutely low key, preferring to brief journalists rather than be written about.
Cain’s loyalty to Johnson was considered stronger than Cummings, making his sudden departure all the more surprising. “While others in No 10 have their own opinions or agendas and are frankly not thinking of the PM, Cain works hard to channel what Johnson wanted,” said a former special adviser who departed after last December’s election.
Insiders added that Cain’s role had been strategic for some time. A key period, it is said, was in April, when Johnson was hospitalised with coronavirus and Cummings was also off sick. Cain had to cover for Cummings and was “running the show in many ways”, the former aide said.
But his closeness to the abrasive Cummings created problems as the government struggled with the pandemic crisis. There was speculation of tension with Carrie Symonds, another former special adviser, now engaged to the prime minister. But when asked, Cain would confidently dismiss the issue, saying “me and the boss are tight”.
Johnson values loyalty and Cain has displayed it, although, unlike many Tory apparatchiks, he arrived on the scene relatively late.
Cain went to Ormskirk grammar school in Lancashire and Staffordshire University, before starting a career in journalism working first for local papers, including the Gloucester Citizen, before moving briefly to the Sun and then the Labour-supporting Mirror.
He spent time as the Mirror Chicken during the 2010 election campaign, taunting Conservative leader David Cameron in feathered fancy dress. “Malcolm Clucker,” the paper read when it broke the story last year. The spinner saw the funny side of the improbable episode; a framed copy of the front page is in his Downing Street office.
Cain’s journalism career had stalled and he was working as a legal PR when he applied to join Vote Leave as head of broadcast in early 2016. His political career took off.
After the surprise Brexit vote, Cain was rewarded with a special adviser’s job and went to work for Johnson at the Foreign Office, where the two became close.
When Johnson resigned and joined the backbenches over Brexit, Cain stayed on as his adviser. He even worked without pay for a while, telling reporters he believed “the boss would come good”. As Theresa May’s grip on power weakened, Cain worked reporters on the left and right in Westminster’s tearoom and at nearby bars, often briefing against the then prime minister.
Yet the clubbable nature comes with a pugnacious streak. Frustrations with the media coverage at the beginning of Johnson’s premiership led to Cain banning ministers from Radio 4’s Today programme, Channel 4 News and other outlets.
Critics described the approach as Trumpian but Cain was happy to pick the fight, arguing that Today had a pro-remain bias, as demonstrated by recording programmes from university campuses. “The ban will stop when they better understand the country,” he said.
It was ultimately Covid-19 that forced Cain to make peace with the BBC, although there are ongoing feuds with others such as Piers Morgan at ITV’s Good Morning Britain. Friends said the relentless, combative nature of the job led Cain to contemplate leaving Downing Street “once the government had got over the hump of Covid”.
About a week ago, Johnson asked him to become chief of staff, presenting the loyalist with an unexpected dilemma. Few, though, expected him to quit: that he did so suggested the change on offer struck him as less of a promotion than it might have first appeared.
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