Kemi Badenoch might be gone as Tory chief inside a 12 months – and there are plots already below solution to oust her, Dominic Cummings has mentioned.
The previous Quantity 10 aide additionally claimed the Conservative Occasion “might be dead”.
His remarks got here in a wide-ranging interview with Sky Information, by which the controversial determine, who served as Boris Johnson’s chief adviser from 2019 to 2020, mentioned Nigel Farage may “definitely” change into the following prime minister.
On Ms Badenoch, who gained the Tory management race final November, Mr Cummings mentioned: “Kemi goes to go, most likely this 12 months.
“There’s already people who find themselves organising to do away with her, and I feel that that can work. If it doesn’t work this 12 months, it should undoubtedly occur after subsequent Could.
“She’s a goner, so there’s going to be a big transition there.”
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In a damning indictment of the get together he served, he mentioned: “It’s fairly doable the Tories have simply, type of, crossed the occasion horizon and really aren’t salvageable.
“Like, everybody form of assumes that as a result of they’ve at all times been round, then in some way there have to be a minimum of one final likelihood for them to show issues round, nevertheless it’s doable that likelihood is of their previous and doesn’t exist.
“It might be dead.”
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Kemi Badenoch solely took over as Tory chief late final 12 months. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings revealed he has held conferences with Mr Farage and suggested him on go from “one man and an iPhone” to getting into Downing Avenue.
Requested if the Reform UK chief may very well be prime minister, he mentioned: “It may undoubtedly occur now, yeah, as a result of the outdated system’s simply so utterly damaged.
“If he does what I’m suggesting, and really units out a path for the way Reform goes to alter, how Reform goes to herald folks, the way it’s structurally going to change, what it’s going to construct, how it will do coverage, the way it can recruit MPs, and so on.
“If he does that, then there’ll be a huge surge of interest and support into the whole thing.”
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‘One man and an iPhone’
He added: “Reform has been a one-man band. It’s been Nigel and an iPhone.
“They will win 50, 100, 150 seats with Reform as Nigel and an iPhone.
“But they can’t win an overall general election and have a plan for government and have a serious team able to take over in Downing Street and govern and control Whitehall with one man and an iPhone.”
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Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings, pictured in Downing Avenue in 2019. Pic: PA
Nonetheless, the ex-Downing Avenue aide was additionally scathing about Mr Farage’s private attraction, saying it was his get together, not him, that had change into an outlet for anti-establishment feeling.
“It’s not exactly correlated with what people think about Nigel himself,” he mentioned.
“Reform is a car for folks to say: ‘We despise you, Westminster. We hate both the old parties, we hate Whitehall, we hate the old media, we hate the whole f***ing lot of you.’
“And Farage going up in the polls is the expression of that core feeling.”
Mr Cummings left his Downing Avenue position in November 2020 after attracting controversy throughout the coronavirus lockdown when he drove to Barnard Fort in County Durham and claimed he was testing his eyesight.
