Ex-Whitehall mandarin Lord McDonald accused of ‘gloating’ after helping to bring down Boris Johnson
- Ex-Whitehall mandarin Lord McDonald sent a celebratory tweet after the PM quit
- The former Foreign Office chief revealed Johnson knew of Pincher allegations
- He yesterday posted a snap of Parliament at sunset, adding: ‘It was a good day’
- Tory peer Lord Moylan simply replied to Lord McDonald with the word ‘blob’
The ex-Whitehall mandarin who helped to bring down Boris Johnson was yesterday accused of gloating.
Lord McDonald, who triggered this week’s crisis by publicly accusing No10 of lying, posted online a photograph of Parliament at sunset and added the caption: ‘It was a good day.’
His provocative Twitter message on Thursday evening, just hours after Mr Johnson announced he was leaving Downing Street, had been ‘liked’ more than 10,000 times by yesterday.
But Conservative politicians attacked him, saying it was wrong for an unelected civil servant to celebrate the downfall of a PM. Former MEP David Campbell Bannerman asked: ‘Is this former senior civil servant gloating over a deposed Prime Minister then? Or just a nice sunset?’ Conservative councillor Simon Whelband wrote: ‘An unelected former senior civil servant peer gloating about the end of a Prime Minister who won a huge democratic mandate less than three years ago. Sadly I’m not surprised.’
Lord McDonald is pictured with then-Foreign Secretary Johnson outside No 10 in June 2017
Retired Foreign Office chief mandarin Simon McDonald played a major part in the PM’s fall
Mr Johnson (pictured making his resignation speech) quit in large part thanks to McDonald
Tory peer Lord Moylan simply replied to Lord McDonald with the word ‘blob’ – the term used by Mr Johnson’s allies to refer to the Whitehall establishment. Fellow Conservative Baroness Foster replied to the mandarin’s tweet: ‘Really?’
Lord McDonald revealed that Mr Johnson knew of allegations made against Chris Pincher (pictured) when in the Foreign Office
She said it was ‘not a good day’ and asked him if he had been present when Mr Johnson was briefed about accusations against disgraced Tory whip Chris Pincher. An explosive intervention by Lord McDonald on Tuesday morning undermined Downing Street’s account of the scandal.
In a highly unusual move for a career diplomat, he published a letter he had written to the Commons sleaze watchdog claiming that it was ‘not true’ that no formal complaints had been made about Mr Pincher’s conduct or that Mr Johnson had been unaware of them. Lord McDonald was the top Foreign Office mandarin between 2015 and 2020, including the period when Mr Johnson was Foreign Secretary.
Insiders said the pair repeatedly clashed and Mr Johnson thought the ‘Remainiac’ mandarin was trying to ‘undermine him by leaking stories about him being lazy’.
In an interview last year, Lord McDonald said he was ‘soaked’ by the ‘hard rain’ that Mr Johnson’s former top aide Dominic Cummings forecast was coming for Whitehall.
Meanwhile, another former mandarin yesterday accused the current head of the civil service of not doing his job properly.
Sir David Normington, ex-permanent secretary at the Home Office, urged Cabinet Secretary Simon Case to ‘step up’ in the next few weeks.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘He has presided over a decline in standards. He’s had a very difficult Prime Minister to deal with, but he’s sometimes seemed like the bystander at a car crash.’
nA FORMER top Whitehall figure toasted Mr Johnson’s demise with a specially created cocktail last night.
Sir Jonathan Jones, who quit as head of the Government Legal Service over Brexit plans, posted on Twitter a photo of a drink he dubbed the ‘One out of Ten’ – a reference to the PM leaving Downing Street.
He said it was ‘based on an American cocktail I came across called a “Constitution”’.
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