The final instalment of Guto Harri’s Unprecedented podcast details the media “field day” which bought Boris down. He adds, what we all knew, that the Lobby’s “kremlinology” was “ludicrous”. Guto also provides an explanation as to why Boris was initially hesitant to remove the whip from Chris Pincher, he claims Boris said:

“If we took away the whip from everyone here who has pinched someone’s bottom, we will lose our majority.”

Guto followed by caveatting “that’s probably not quite right”. The words “probably” and “quite” are doing a lot of the heavy lifting there…

Guto Harri has previously described the animosity felt by Boris Johnson to “bank manager” Rishi and his “computer says no” Treasury, and now Boris’s former spin doctor has shed further light on the ex-PM’s response. Boris recruited Jacob Rees-Mogg to lead the battle against Rishi and the Brexit-hating Blob in the Treasury. In the latest episode of his Unprecedented podcast, Guto describes how Boris gave Jacob “carte blanche” to give the Treasury a “massive kick”. Jacob agreed, jibing that he was more than happy to “tread on some little toes”.

Guto Harri also describes the initial response of Civil Servants to the Rwanda policy:

“I remember looking around the room and everyone was anxious, because the first thing that came to mind for most people when you said, ‘We’re sending people to Rwanda’ was a horrible, haunting image of machete wielding genocidal tribes that went through each other decades ago.”

A sign of things to come…

The latest episode of Guto Harri’s Unprecedented podcast has shed further light on the tensions between Boris and Rishi while the pair were neighbours in Downing Street, with Johnson charging at Sunak’s affinity for splashing the cash. Boris grew frustrated with the Treasury’s “bank manager” orthodoxy, leading to “untenable” tension with the then Chancellor who had “signed too many cheques but got too little value for money”. In his frustration, Boris begged:

“If Rishi’s a Thatcherite, let’s have it!”

Quite…

Although less explicit than Harri’s previous revelations, Boris was again reported to have said “f*ck this sh*t, we need to clear out the Treasury… the computer just says no”. Guto also claims that Rishi did return fire as he dug in with his own expansionist agenda, leading him to conclude that, had the government not collapsed, the Chancellor wouldn’t have lasted the summer. It certainly adds context to the public tussles currently playing out over in the Cabinet Office…

Boris Johnson wanted to send a meme video to Rishi Sunak calling him a “a c*nt” after he resigned as Chancellor last year. The swear-y revelation comes from the first episode of Guto Harri’s new podcast, Unprecedented, which sheds more light on tensions between Boris and Rishi – both over policy and Sunak’s resignation. Guto describes Boris’s response to Rishi’s resignation, which he saw as “the great betrayal of all time”, and how he joked about sending him a video (as seen above) ending with the charge “you’re a c*nt”. Listener discretion is advised for co-conspirators with an aversion to robust language…

These tensions came to a head following a prolonged period of policy clashes. Boris “wanted something more dynamic to deliver economic growth”, whilst Rishi was “digging in”. The frustration with a “bank manager” Chancellor became too much for Boris, who “blew up”, exclaiming “f*ck this sh*t, man. F*ck this shit. We need to clear out the Treasury… We need dynamism! We’re not here to just manage the decline. We need the growth engine of the British economy to be humming…” 

Unfortunately, Rishi wasn’t in the room.

Ahead of the launch of his new podcast, Unprecedented, Guto Harri has been out on the media round. After the Mail detailed his claims that Boris and then Prince Charles had a bust-up over the Rwanda policy, speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC this morning he’s now shed light on Boris’s view of Partygate. When asked how Boris described Sue, Guto said:

“One word maybe that will be recurring in it, “psycho” Sue Gray would be part of it. There was a sense that she lacked perspective as to what he had done… towards the end I think he rightfully thought that there was no perspective and things were completely out of all proportion in the way Partygate was viewed”.

Boris’s view on “psycho” Sue has only been vindicated by subsequent events…