Johnson wanted to send Sunak message calling him a c***, ex-comms chief claims

Boris Johnson joked about sending a message to Rishi Sunak calling him a “c***” in the aftermath of his resignation as chancellor, it has been claimed.

Guto Harri, who served as No 10’s director of communications under Mr Johnson, has claimed that the ex-prime minister found a video he wanted to send to Mr Sunak in the days after he left Government.

“Rishi walked about, didn’t even tell Boris he was going to go. Basically went public with a resignation and a few days later, Boris found a little video on the internet that expressed what he wanted to basically say to Rishi.

“He didn’t send it, but he sent it to me and said: ‘Thinking of sending this to Rishi’.”

The video, Mr Harri claimed, contained the words: “You’re a c***.”

“So there you have it. If you really want to know how Boris Johnson felt about Rishi Sunak in the immediate aftermath of his toppling and the great betrayal of all time, as he sees it, there you have it.”

Exodus

The departure of Mr Sunak is seen by allies of Mr Johnson as having helped precipitate the ministerial exodus that eventually forced him from office last summer.

In the same podcast, released on Thursday for Global, Mr Harri reveals the policy tensions between the two men and the “fundamental disagreement” between the pair on economic policy and tax decisions.

“There was a moment when Boris blew up, sadly Rishi was not in the room,” Mr Harri says.

“F**k this shit man, f*** this s***. We need to clear out the Treasury, the Treasury is acting like a bank manager, not an engine of growth. We need Singapore-on-Thames, we need dynamism, we’re not just here to manage the decline, we need the growth engine of the British economy to be humming.”