How the Goveites took charge of No. 10

When Boris Johnson made the extraordinary decision last week to brief newspapers that Dominic Cummings was behind a series of leaks, the move seemed close to kamikaze. He had chosen a target who isn’t exactly known for walking away from a fight. And there’s another, more serious question: why did nobody in No. 10 stop him?

Johnson has always been an impulsive politician, but he has also employed people who can act as a moderating force. He makes friends slowly, which is why he tries to take allies with him. Ann Sindall, his old secretary at The Spectator, went to work with him when he became London mayor. He hired no fewer than seven deputy mayors and took two (Sir Eddie Lister and Munira Mirza) to No. 10.

But as PM, resignations and redeployments have been happening thick and fast: not only Cummings but the director of communications, Lee Cain, whose successor, James Slack, lasted a few months. Sir Eddie has gone after a lobbying row. Press secretary Allegra Stratton left before even starting her on-camera role. Just a few senior advisers are left from the team Johnson assembled on entering No. 10 in 2019.

Johnson’s new circle is largely made up of friends of Michael Gove. The Prime Minister’s ‘three musketeers’ — Henry Newman, Henry Cook and Meg Powell-Chandler — are Goveites. Newman is also a close friend of Carrie Symonds, Johnson’s fiancée, and a long-standing ally of Simone Finn, who dated Gove after university, and who in February was parachuted in to be deputy chief of staff. Along with the youthful cabinet secretary Simon Case, the ensemble was quickly heralded in media puff pieces as the return of ‘adults in the room’. They would strike a new tone: less abrasive, more conciliatory.