I’ve known Cummings for 20 years

HOLD on, folks! Let’s pause before sweeping a recently elected Prime Minister with a thumping majority out of office.

There is something extremely un-British about a howling mob led by his mortal enemies in hot pursuit of a man who until weeks ago was one of the most popular leaders ever.

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Yes, Boris Johnson has made mistakes, most of them avoidable, many of them infuriating.

But who is running the country? The tens of millions of voters who backed BoJo, Brexit and the dream of a prosperous future outside the European Union?

Or a cavalcade of malcontents led by unelected Dominic Cummings plus an all-party bunch of diehard Remainers and a chorus of screeching critics on the BBC?

Now, in a grotesque escalation of police power, the Met has turned a Downing Street “Bring Your Own Bottle” party into a crime scene.

If recent history is any guide, Plod’s next step will be to turn civil servant Sue Gray’s probe on Covid rule-breaking into a jury trial at the Old Bailey.

Shouldn’t we give him some leeway?

They might turn a blind eye to stabbings, rape and the paralysis of our capital city by climate change protesters, but not to an illicit bottle of Co-op wine in a Downing Street cellar.

Are we all going stark, raving mad? Is this really a matter for Scotland Yard?

The latest “scandal” involves a cake for BoJo’s 56th and some staff singing Happy Birthday . . . a birthday, let’s remember, that Boris Johnson almost never saw.

At that moment, the PM himself was recovering from a near-death brush with Covid. He had become a father again at literally the moment he was fighting for his life.

Shouldn’t we give him some leeway?

No. Not if my old friend Dom Cummings has anything to do with it.

I have known Dom for 20 years, since we worked together in the battle to save Britain from joining the doomed Euro.

He greeted me as “my oldest friend in journalism” when we met again after his arrival in Downing Street.

Indeed, I was one of the few who ran to his defence over the preposterous Barnard Castle “eyesight test”, only to be proven wrong as events turned out.

My admiration slowly evaporated as I watched him brag about his plot to depose Boris within days of the 2019 General Election in which he — not Dom — won an 80-seat majority. Who the hell does he think he is?

Dominic was at the very heart of Downing Street until he stormed out with his Pandora’s Box of lethal secrets that he has poured over the PM’s head ever since.

He boasted of his “tight grip” over No 10. So where was he while these drunken orgies were in full swing? Like Macavity the Mystery Cat, he always seems to have been elsewhere.

In the view of many Tories, his vendetta against Boris and his wife, Carrie, is nothing less than treachery.

My admiration slowly evaporated as I watched him brag about his plot to depose Boris within days of the 2019 General Election in which he — not Dom — won an 80-seat majority. Who the hell does he think he is?

Trevor Kavanagh

“He’s backing Rishi Sunak, but who’s to say he won’t turn on him, too?” wonders a Government insider. “In any case, he is not acting out of nobility.”

Also, remember, it was Dom who pressed for lockdown and the £37BILLION Test and Trace fiasco.

And what about those waiting in the wings for Boris’s job? One reason Boris is still in place is that there is no clear favourite.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Chancellor Rishi Sunak are front-runners. Both drape themselves in the colours of Tory hero Margaret Thatcher.

A gratuitous act of mass suicide

But the Truss fan club is flakey and Dishy Rishi is regarded with increasing suspicion.

His claim that unpopular National Insurance hikes are a “Boris tax” is, at best, dubious.

“This was a Treasury decision. It is Rishi’s tax,” says a Cabinet minister.

“Even before his October budget, it was clear tax revenues were improving and the increase could be avoided. We don’t need Rishi’s tax rise.”

There is also nervousness about the Chancellor’s Brexit credentials.

It seems he is against moves to scrap the Northern Ireland protocol for fear of a trade war with Europe.

“But that’s exactly why we voted Leave,” a source insisted.

So how have we reached the point where a governing party with a substantial majority has plunged itself into a gratuitous act of mass suicide?

Do they believe voters will forgive or forget this act of madness and self-destruction while they are struggling with the most serious cost-of-living crisis in recent memory?

As John Major found in 1997, even a strong and growing economy cannot rescue an unpopular government once the public has made up its mind.

Unless Tory MPs see sense, back Boris and start delivering their election promises, we face the prospect of leaden-footed leftie Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister in 2024.