Is Boris in big trouble?

The bitter row building up between Boris Johnson and his erstwhile chief adviser Dominic Cummings is not for the fainthearted. It's schadenfreude at its worst. Cummings was effectively booted out from his job at Number 10 Downing Street because his Machiavellian way of doing business was scaring the hell out of everyone, includng Boris, and he had to go before everyone had a nervous breadown. But Boris realised Cummings knew where all the bodies were buried. So it was a calculated risk. Then the story broke on the BBC about Boris promising Sir James Dyson, inventor of the baglass vacuum cleaner and a myriad other high-tech stuff, to make sure his company, headquartered in Singapore, didn't have to pay extra tax if he returned to the UK to build oxygen ventilator equipment for the Covid crisis. It made headlines because the way it was reported made it look very dodgy: Dyson ringing and emailing Boris personally to get him to sort out his tax problem with the Treasury rather than go through the proper channels. Dyson is a massive British success story and it's hardly surprising he knows Boris's phone number and chose to ask the prime minister for help rather than write a long letter to the Treasury civil service which would probably not have been answered for weeks. I really don't think it's a big deal. But the story is all about alleged Conservative sleaze and Boris's personal integrity or lack of it. Then came the bombshell. Boris asked for a leak inquiry into who leaked his emails to and from Dyson to the BBC but instead of waiting for the result he seemingly authorised one of his press flunkies to brief the newspapers that Cummings was the leaker. Bang! Out came Cummings and published a massive blog denying he was the leaker but was the holder of a pile of scandals which he was ready to spill out to destroy his former boss, including some dodgy dealing about funding the £60,000 makeover at the prime minister's flat in Downing Street. More ammunition for the Labour leader Keir Starmer to bash Boris and call for all kinds of public inquiries. The only sleaze as far as I can see is the dreadful revenge allegations emerging from Cummings who, it has to be said, is not the most popular man in Britain following his alleged breach of the first Covid lockdown when he drove all the way up north to visit his parents and then took a trip to some castle tourist spot, allegedly to check his eyes to make sure it was safe for him to drive back to London. Yeah, right. Anyway Cummings is now raging with revenge and God knows what else he has up his sleeve. All very unpleasant and undignified. Boris must feel he has opened up a can of very long, slimey worms.