Boris Johnson wanted to send Rishi Sunak a video calling him a “c***” after he resigned from his cabinet, it has emerged.
The former prime minister believed he was the victim of “the great betrayal of all time”, according to his former communications chief, Guto Harri.
In a new podcast, Unprecedented, Harri recalls the moment Sunak quit as chancellor last July, a move that ultimately led to Johnson being removed from office.
He said: “Rishi walked out. Didn’t even tell Boris he was going to go. Basically, he went public with a resignation.
“And a few days later, Boris found a little video on the internet that expressed what he wanted to say to Rishi. He didn’t send it, but he sent it to me and said, ‘thinking of sending this to Rishi’. Video plays: ‘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.”
Harri has already revealed that Johnson wanted to sack Sunak before his resignation.
Detailing the policy differences between the pair, Harri said: “There was a moment where Boris blew up. Sadly, Rishi was not in the room. He needed to know but Boris just basically went, fuck this shit, man, fuck this shit. 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 here to just manage the decline, we need the growth engine of the British economy to be humming.
“And so, this tension was building and that was far more significant in the end, behind the scenes, than any row over partygate or the trivial nonsense of everyday politics.
“This was a fundamental disagreement of policy that explains the fault lines that are still at the heart of the Conservative Party.”
Elsewhere in his podcast, Harri reveals that Johnson believed Sue Gray’s investigation into the partygate scandal was “an orgy of pain, abuse and humiliation”.
He said: “Something was happening to Boris, that he’d never had to deal with before. He was in real trouble. Big trouble.
“Conservative MPs in his words had become psychotic. The police were trawling all over partygate and an inquiry led by an – until then, at least – obscure civil servant called Sue Gray, now a household name of course and a hero of the left, was planning what he described then as an orgy of pain, abuse and humiliation.”