Whitehall ‘plotted to gag Dominic Cummings’ to stem revelations about Boris Johnson’s Downing Street

Civil servants have been plotting how to stop Dominic Cummings from publishing embarrassing revelations about life in Boris Johnson’s 10 Downing Street, it has emerged.

Whitehall officials looked at what action could be taken against Mr Cummings, including whether he had potentially breached his employment contract as a special adviser, the civil service code or even the Official Secrets Act.

Civil servants in the Cabinet Office went so far as drafting a letter to Mr Cummings urging him to stop publishing damaging stories about the Government on his social media and blogging feeds.

However, the plans were then vetoed by 10 Downing Street. One senior source there said any bid to silence Mr Cummings was now “not going to happen”.

The draft letter is understood to have reminded Mr Cummings that information he had learned during his time in 10 Downing Street was not intended to be shared publicly.

One source told The Telegraph: “There was a discussion. There was a proposal to do something and in the end, they decided it would just make it worse.”

The ‘Edward Snowden of Whitehall’

Mr Cummings appeared to confirm a Financial Times report about the talks, writing on Twitter on Wednesday that it was “typical of government that internal discussions about employment contracts ‘leak’ to their inter-office mailing system (FT)”.

Ministers and officials were described as being privately fearful that acting against Mr Cummings could turn him into a “martyr”, or allow him to style himself as “the Edward Snowden of Whitehall”, the Financial Times said.

Mr Cummings, who stood down as Mr Johnson’s chief adviser last November, has repeatedly sought to embarrass his former boss by publishing accounts of private conversations and messages between officials during his year in 10 Downing Street.

Last weekend, he described the Prime Minister as a shopping “trolley”, an apparent reference to the PM’s apparently chaotic approach to decision-making.

Two weeks ago, Mr Cummings revealed how Mr Johnson had condemned Matt Hancock, the former Health Secretary, as “totally f------ hopeless” in an expletive-laden late-night text and considered handing some of his responsibilities for the pandemic to Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office Minister.