The break-up: is Boris about to lose Scotland?

At the stroke of five o’clock last Friday, the new head of No. 10’s Union unit was due to brief government aides on the robust new strategy to counter the SNP. It was urgently needed: campaigning for the Scottish parliament election starts in a few weeks and if Nicola Sturgeon wins a majority — as looks likely — she’ll demand another independence referendum. Even if Boris Johnson refuses, the SNP will attempt to push on regardless. Any plan to save Britain must be put into action sooner rather than later.

But an hour or so before the briefing, an email went around to say it was cancelled. What’s more its author, Oliver Lewis, had resigned, just two weeks into his job as head of the unit. Explanations for his departure started flying around Westminster. Lewis is a protégé of Dominic Cummings, and his departure — some say his purging — was seen by many as part of the unfinished civil war with Boris Johnson’s former advisers. Whatever the truth, the psycho-drama sent a clear message: that the SNP may be vulnerable but the Tories are too busy feuding and briefing against each other to take full advantage.

Oliver Lewis had an aggressive strategy to combat the SNP, but it wasn’t his approach that was the problem. The heart of the trouble was the arrival in No. 10 of two advisers, Henry Newman and Simone Finn. Both are allies of Michael Gove and close friends of Carrie Symonds, the Prime Minister’s fiancée.

Vote Leave allies warned of the growing influence of Symonds, while other aides fretted over the loyalties of the Gove-ites. A No. 10 spokesperson was forced to deny that the Prime Minister’s fiancée was secretly running the country via aides invited to soirées in the Downing Street flat. A briefing war soon broke out over the behaviour of Dilyn the dog, which only served to show the nation how easily distracted the government is.