Leaks

Does anyone doubt Boris’s leaked ‘bodies’ comment?

Of course Boris Johnson raged, King Lear-like, that he was prepared to ‘let the bodies pile high in their thousands’ if the alternative was subjecting the country to a third lockdown more dispiriting than either of its dreary, even grim, predecessors. I say ‘of course he said it’ not just because at least three different sources have confirmed to at least three different reporters that the Prime Minister did say it but also, and significantly, because it would be so wholly in character for the Prime Minister to have said it. If it sounds like the sort of thing he would say, that is largely because it is the sort

Dominic Cummings: I am not the Downing Street leaker

Dominic Cummings has released the following statement on his website: The Prime Minister’s new Director of Communications Jack Doyle, at the PM’s request, has made a number of false accusations to the media. 1. Re Dyson. I do have some WhatsApp messages between the PM/Dyson forwarded to me by the PM. I have not found the ones that were leaked to Laura Kuenssberg on my phone nor am I aware of being sent them last year. I was not directly or indirectly a or the source for the BBC/Kuenssberg story on the PM/Dyson texts. Yesterday some No. 10 officials told me that No. 10 would make this accusation and told me

Katy Balls

Why is No. 10 turning on Dominic Cummings over ‘leaks’?

After yet another week of government leaks of private correspondence sent by the Prime Minister, Downing Street has hit back. But it’s not to deny the contents of any of the messages – which range from WhatsApps with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince over football to discussions with UK entrepreneur James Dyson about ventilators – it’s to blame Dominic Cummings for the messages being made public in the first place. Late last night multiple papers (though notably not the Boris-sceptic Daily Mail) published briefings by a Downing Street source that Johnson’s former senior aide was likely behind the stories. A government figure tells the Telegraph that ‘if you join the dots it