Dominic Cummings is delusional, Welsh secretary says

It would have been absurd for Dominic Cummings to try to oust the prime minister after his 2019 election landslide, a UK government minister has said.

Welsh Secretary Simon Hart spoke after the broadcast of an hour-long interview with Boris Johnson's former adviser.

In it, Mr Cummings said he discussed ousting Boris Johnson within days of the Conservatives winning the election.

Mr Hart accused him of being delusional and said only MPs could oust the PM.

But he said he had not watched the programme.

Mr Cummings said Boris Johnson had been reluctant to tighten Covid restrictions as he thought people dying from it were "essentially all over 80".

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In the wide-ranging interview, which was aired on Tuesday night, he said he and his allies began to fear for their positions by January 2020.

Dominic Cummings quit as the PM's chief adviser last autumn

Mr Cummings said: "[People] were already saying, 'By the summer, either we'll all have gone from here or we'll be in the process of trying to get rid of [Mr Johnson] and get someone else in as prime minister'."

Defending the discussions about removing the democratically elected Mr Johnson, Mr Cummings said: "He [the prime minister] doesn't have a plan, he doesn't know how to be prime minister and we only got him in there because we had to solve a certain problem, not because he was the right person to be running the country."

Speaking in a briefing with Welsh journalists, Mr Hart said he had not had a single message from a constituent about the interview, "so I don't think it was only me who wasn't watching".

"I have to say that each time Dominic Cummings has appeared on the news, he's becoming a less credible witness than the time before," he added.

"He comes across as delusional," Mr Hart told the briefing.

"And the idea that, you know, he would campaign to get the prime minister elected and then within days campaign to get him out is an absurdity and doesn't account for the fact that the only people who could have done that are members of parliament anyway, of which he is not one."

"The less notice people take of him, the more bitter he seems to become."

The Welsh secretary said Mr Cummings had given recollections of meetings that Mr Hart had taken part in when the ex-adviser appeared at a joint select committee earlier in the year.

He said they bore no "resemblance" to the meetings he had been part of.