Downing Street has confirmed that Dominic Cummings and Rishi Sunak did meet (Image: Getty)
Boris Johnson’s former adviser Dominic Cummings has revealed that he secretly met PM Rishi Sunak to talk about how to defeat Labour.
Mr Cummings said he met Mr Sunak to talk about how to trounce Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party in an upcoming election.
Now senior Tories have reacted in fury at the news - with former Cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke telling Express.co.uk that he can't understand why Sunak would "entertain the thought" of giving Cummings "a second chance to poison British politics."
Writing on his blog, Mr Cummings revealed what took place in the meetings but said his conditions for doing a deal had not been met.
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Downing Street has now confirmed there was a broad discussion of politics and campaigning but no job was offered.
Mr Cummings wrote: "The PM decided against the deal I proposed.
“He wanted instead that I work secretly on politics and communication in return for a promise that I could come to No 10 and sort out my priorities after the election. I declined."
His view is that Mr Sunak's approach to government was "doomed". During his Tory leadership campaign in 2022, Mr Sunak said Mr Cummings would have "absolutely nothing to do with any government that I am privileged to lead".
Tory MPs are furious at Mr Cummings's revelation, after The Times reported that the pair met last December and then again in July.
Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk Sir Simon Clarke, the former Cabinet minister for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, said: “Dominic Cummings is a brilliant strategist and has an extraordinary mind, but he betrayed spectacularly and utterly the faith Boris Johnson and so many of us placed in him.
"I find it incomprehensible that the Prime Minister would entertain the thought of giving him a second chance to poison British politics.”
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Speaking to The Telegraph, one former cabinet minister said of Mr Cummings: “The man is toxic. He caused chaos when he was in Number 10 before. He took down one prime minister [Boris Johnson] and here he is damaging another."
Another former minister told the same publication: “There is a group of us who were in government at the time and who saw the orchestrated campaign to remove Boris Johnson as prime minister and Dominic Cummings’s role in that and Rishi Sunak’s role in that."
They added it was "no coincidence that the truth is coming out of secret complicity" between the pair.
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