Boris Johnson’s former adviser, Dominic Cummings, has promised to launch a political party after what he predicts will be a massive defeat for the Conservatives at the general election.
He said he wanted to, “divert energy and money away from ‘how to revive the Tories’ to ‘how to replace the Tories.'”
Mr. Cummings told the i the Start Up Party would be “ruthlessly focused on the voters not on Westminster and the old media.”
In his Substack blog last year Mr. Cummings said he wanted his party to focus on reducing immigration, closing tax loopholes for “the 1 percent” and reforming the civil service.
Mr. Cummings, who left his role as a government adviser in November 2020, has long railed at the establishment and especially the civil service for not being radical enough.
‘Labour Will not Alter the Ultimate Trajectory Very Much’
“But Labour I think will not alter the ultimate trajectory very much, they’ll be continuity Treasury, continuity David Cameron, George Osborne, Sunak, so everything will keep failing and everyone will be even more miserable by 2026 than they are now,” he added.“So, to change that you have to have two fundamental things: you have to have an entity which is ruthlessly focused on the voters not on Westminster and the old media. And you have to have something which is friendly towards all the amazing talent in the country, people who build things in private and public sector,” said Mr. Cummings.
He said the new party could be successful despite the first-past-the-post system which has prevented any new party breaking through since Labour managed it in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Green Party has only managed to get one seat in Parliament despite garnering relatively high levels of support across the country and the Liberal Democrats’ number of MPs is much less than their share of the vote nationwide.
But Mr. Cummings said history showed wars and pandemics often helped to “reshape states” and he believes his new party could be not only iconoclastic but successful.
Earlier this year Mr. Sunak denied he had offered Mr. Cummings a job.
Mr. Cummings had claimed he was offered a “secret deal” to advise Mr. Sunak in the run up to the next general election.
In January the prime minister’s official spokesman said a “private political discussion” had taken place but denied Mr. Cummings was offered a job.
The pair spoke in London in December 2022 and again over dinner in North Yorkshire in July 2023.
Mr. Cummings told the Sunday Times he was only prepared to offer his help if Mr. Sunak would prioritise the “most critical things” which he said included nuclear weapons infrastructure, future pandemics, Ministry of Defence procurement, artificial intelligence and what he called “broken core government institutions.”
The prime minister’s spokesman said: “This is a private political discussion, I think my political colleagues have made clear it was about politics and campaigning.”
