Boris Johnson’s former comms chief says PM wanted to send Rishi Sunak a video meme calling him a ‘c***’ after he resigned as chancellor last year in the ‘greatest betrayal of all time’
A furious Boris Johnson considered sending Rishi Sunak a direct message calling him a ‘c***’ after he resigned as chancellor last year, a former aide to the ex-PM has revealed.
Mr Johnson was livid when Mr Sunak quit the Treasury in July, and his supporters have long said it was the trigger that finally brought down his scandal-plagued administration.
In a new podcast series released today, Guto Harri, who was Mr Johnson’s director of communications at the time, lifted the lid on the PM’s own personal fury.
In the first episode of Global’s Unprecedented: Inside Downing Street, he claimed that the ex-prime minister found a video he wanted to send to Mr Sunak in the days after he left Government.
The video, which has circulated online for some years, shows a man playing a tune on a piano and guitar before singing one line: ‘You’re a c***.’
Mr Harri said: ‘Rishi walked out. Didn’t even tell Boris he was going to go. Basically, he went public with a resignation.
‘And a few days later, Boris found a little video on the internet that expressed what he wanted to basically say to Rishi. He didn’t send it, but he sent it to me and said: ‘Thinking of sending this to Rishi.’
Mr Johnson was livid when Mr Sunak quit the Treasury in July, and his supporters have long said it was the trigger that finally brought down his scandal-plagued administration.
In a new podcast series released today, Guto Harri, who was Mr Johnson’s director of communications at the time, lifted the lid on the PM’s own personal fury.
In the first episode of Global’s Unprecedented: Inside Downing Street, he claimed that the ex-prime minister found a video he wanted to send to Mr Sunak in the days after he left Government. The video, which has circulated online for some years, shows a man playing a tune on a piano and guitar before singing one line: ‘You’re a c**t.’
The departure of Mr Sunak is seen by allies of Mr Johnson as having helped precipitate the ministerial exodus that eventually forced him from office last summer.
‘So, there you have it. If you really want to know how Boris Johnson felt about Rishi Sunak in the immediate aftermath of his toppling and the great betrayal of all time as he sees it, there you have it.’
The departure of Mr Sunak is seen by allies of Mr Johnson as having helped precipitate the ministerial exodus that eventually forced him from office last summer.
In the same podcast, released on Thursday for Global, Mr Harri reveals the policy tensions between the two men and the ‘fundamental disagreement’ between the pair on economic policy and tax decisions.
‘There was a moment when Boris blew up, sadly Rishi was not in the room,’ Mr Harri said.
‘F*** this shit man, f*** this s***. We need to clear out the Treasury, the Treasury is acting like a bank manager, not an engine of growth. We need Singapore-on-Thames, we need dynamism, we’re not just here to manage the decline, we need the growth engine of the British economy to be humming.’
Earlier this week Mr Harri claimed Mr Sunak would have been fired as chancellor if Boris Johnson had not been forced from office.
Asked by LBC if Mr Johnson was preparing to move Mr Sunak from the Chancellor job, he said: ‘Yes. But the chancellor beat him to it in a way and brought the whole show down.’
In a wide-raging interview to promote his new podcast covering the end of the Boris Johnson era, Mr Harri also revealed the then PM branded civil service investigator Sue Gray ‘psycho’ while she looked into his Partygate lawbreaking.
He also revealed Mr Johnson left the future King Charles ‘squirming’ in a face-to-face confrontation after the royal criticised his government’s flagship immigration policy.
The former PM had a heated 15-minute exchange at a Commonwealth summit in Rwanda with the then Prince of Wales after the Mail revealed he had branded the £120m scheme ‘appalling’.
Harri revealed his boss had ‘squared up’ to the prince, who was crowned Charles III at the weekend.
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