Boris Johnson “blew up” in frustration over Rishi Sunak’s running of the Treasury, yelling “f*** this s***” over his Chancellor’s refusal to cut taxes and spending after Covid.
The revelations once again come from Mr Johnson’s former director of communications Guto Harri, who is releasing weekly podcast memoirs from his time in Downing Street with Global.
This week’s episode focused on Covid; both Boris Johnson’s own experience battling the virus, and the Government’s response to both keeping deaths at bay and the subsequent cost of living crisis.
Mr Harri reveals that one of Boris Johnson’s biggest issues as Britain emerged from the pandemic into the cost of living crisis was a “lack of oomph, as he saw it, in the Treasury”.
Tensions began to rapidly build between Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak, eventually becoming untenable.
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Mr Johnson’s former top spin doctor repeated his belief that, had Mr Sunak not resigned and caused the Government to collapse, the PM would have sacked him as Chancellor in the summer.
He said: “Had the whole Government not imploded shortly afterwards, I doubt the chancellor would have lasted the summer.”
Mr Johnson’s frustration with Mr Sunak is laid bare in the latest episode.
Mr Harri says the Prime Minister swore about Mr Sunak’s decisions as Chancellor and goaded him to be more Thatcherite.
On one occasion Mr Johnson moaned: “If Rishi is a Thatcherite less have it.
“We need to clear out the Treasury begin a new as Singapore on the Thames. That department has basically become a bank manager. The computer just says no.
“We need, as Boris saw it, to get out of people’s way. ‘We’re costing people too much costing business too much government has become too expensive itself’.
“Rishi in his words had signed too many checks, but got very little value for money. It was time for tax cuts, deregulation and dynamism.”
However Mr Sunak refused to cave to the Prime Minister’s demands, openly defying Mr Johnson and accusing him of hypocrisy by also demanding vast spending on infrastructure, new hospitals, more police officers, doctors and nurses.
“He used a very memorable phrase: ‘We had a song for a long time. Do we not want to sing it anymore?’ And on that occasion, Rishi Sunak dug in, refused to come up with a growth plan, refused to cancel the planned hike in corporation tax, and insisted on hitting energy companies with a windfall levy that Boris didn’t want to do.”
Mr Sunak’s aversion to traditional Tory economics has been criticised by Tories in the Spectator today, amid criticism over the Government’s latest plan to sit down with supermarkets and discuss a voluntary price cap.
A Tory MP said: “It seems like we’re selling Tory language with Labour policy. I suspect the public will eventually pick Labour policy – and it won’t be us delivering it.”
A minister lamented: “To be interventionist and heavy-handed is now a Tory trait, I’m not so sure we’re dressing up as Labour. I think we’re morphing into them.”
