Dominic Cummings accuses Boris Johnson of lying in Lebedev row

Dominic Cummings has accused Boris Johnson of lying over claims that intelligence officers’ security concerns about giving a peerage to a Russian media magnate and son of a former KGB were overridden.

The prime minister dismissed as “simply incorrect” reports last week that he tried to intervene to hand Evgeny Lebedev a seat in the House of Lords and law-making powers for life against the advice of UK spy agencies.

(Snip)

“I was in the room when the PM was told by Cabinet Office officials that the intelligence services and other parts of the deep state had, let’s say, serious reservations about the PM’s plan,” Cummings, the prime minister’s former chief aide, wrote in a blogpost.

“I supported these concerns and said to the PM in his study explicitly that he should not go ahead. He was very cross and as he does when cross he blustered nonsense.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/mar/16/dominic-cummings-accuses-boris-johnson-of-lying-in-lebedev-row