At 5pm every Thursday the government’s special advisers meet in one of three rooms in 10 Downing Street. Liam Booth-Smith, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, goes around the room thanking the team for driving home the government’s message in the media before analysing Labour attack lines and previewing the week ahead. It is straightforward and professional – the opposite to the meetings under Boris Johnson.
Back then, as No 10 fought to prorogue parliament and fulfil the promise of Brexit, the atmosphere was combative. Booth-Smith’s predecessor as chief of staff, Dominic Cummings, would preside over long sessions where young aides felt humiliated and other staff stood up demanding to be treated with respect. “It was brutal,” one top aide remembers. “Cummings was declaring war on pretty much everybody. Everything he said was designed to be written up in newspapers.” Leaks abounded. Cummings amassed a power base that rivalled Johnson’s. Simon McDonald, the civil servant leading the Foreign Office at the time, said the situation was akin to there being two prime ministers.
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