Why Boris Johnson 'wanted to get Carrie a job with lots of foreign travel': Dominic Cummings claims Prime Minister said his wife was driving him 'crackers'... and says he was offered a peerage

Dominic Cummings has claimed that Boris Johnson said his partner Carrie was driving him 'crackers' and suggested finding her 'a job with lots of foreign travel'.

The Prime Minister's former chief adviser also said that Mr Johnson offered him a peerage when he left No 10.

Downing Street sources were quick to deny his allegations last night.

Mr Cummings said he thought the former Miss Symonds was a 'wrong 'un' from the moment he met her.

He left No 10 in November last year following a dramatic fall-out with the PM and his then-fiancee.

Mr Cummings said his relationship with the PM changed after he won a massive majority at the general election in December 2019, adding: 'The entire situation was completely transformed.'

In an interview with The Spectator – the magazine that employs his wife – he said he had a bad impression of the PM's wife from their earliest meeting.

'I thought she was a wrong 'un from the day I first met her back in 2016 when she was a press officer of some kind,' he added.

Dominic Cummings has claimed that Boris Johnson said his partner Carrie was driving him 'crackers' and suggested finding her 'a job with lots of foreign travel'. Pictured L-R: Carrie Symonds, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings celebrate on Election Night 2019

Mr Cummings claimed that in the final few days before he walked out of Downing Street, Mr Johnson said his then fiancee was driving him 'crackers'. He said: 'So when Boris and I came to the break-up in the final few days, we sat on the sofa and he started reading out questions from his phone and I said, 'Have you lost your mind? Your crazy girlfriend is sitting upstairs texting you questions?'

'And he was like, 'Oh my God, you're right, she's driving me crackers. We've got to find her a job with lots of foreign travel.

'Could we get the Cabinet Secretary to give her a job on COP26, travelling round with Kate Middleton?'

'That's the weird thing: part of his brain knows that his girlfriend is crackers, but he's also trapped.' Mr Cummings added: 'Well, you know this crazy thing happens with people, they just get trapped by crazy girlfriends. It's not the first time it's happened.'

A source inside No 10 said the claims were 'risible, like much of Dom's recent output'. They added: 'These claims are untrue.'

The PM's former chief adviser admitted he has not spoken to Mr Johnson since leaving Downing Street.

But he said Mr Johnson had offered him a peerage when he quit. Asked if it would have made him 'Lord Cummings of Barnard Castle', he replied: 'No! He said it but then he almost immediately started laughing and realised that that was not exactly the sort of thing that would buy me off.' Asked whether he rejoiced when Matt Hancock stood down as health secretary over leaked CCTV footage of him kissing an aide in his office, Mr Cummings said: 'Well, obviously it would have been better if Boris had fired him last May when I told him to. But if it ends with a sex scandal, fine by me.'

He added: 'I suspect that all his officials knew what was happening, and they knew that what I said about him was true, and someone in his private office will also have had access to CCTV and thought: Ah, we'll get rid of that lying b******.'

Mr Cummings said he thought the former Miss Symonds was a 'wrong 'un' from the moment he met her. Pictured: Carrie and Boris Johnson on holiday with their child and dog in Scotland

Mr Cummings said he told the Prime Minister that he planned to leave on December 18 last year, adding that he had never wanted a career in Westminster. But he says his departure was hastened when Mrs Johnson started plotting to remove his allies from No 10.

'I walked out. And then she was terrified that Boris would reverse-ferret so she deliberately blew everything up in the media to cause maximum carnage,' he said. 'So then all relations between us were severed and I haven't spoken to him since.'

Asked why he agreed to work for the PM when he thought him 'unfit' for office, Mr Cummings said that the alternative was former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and a second Brexit referendum which he believed could lead to violence.

'MPs wouldn't be able to campaign safely outside the M25 without armed guards,' he said. Mr Cummings now writes a blog on the Substack website.