Dominic Cummings ‘must envy’ Timothy Johnston’s power in DUP, says ex-minister

Dominic Cummings “must be envious” of the authority wielded by the DUP’s powerful backroom figure Timothy Johnston, a former DUP minister has said.
Timothy Johnston has been the power behind the throne of successive DUP leaders for 15 yearsTimothy Johnston has been the power behind the throne of successive DUP leaders for 15 years
Timothy Johnston has been the power behind the throne of successive DUP leaders for 15 years

On Tuesday the News Letter reported that Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill’s Stormont department is making no attempt to recoup any of the £92,000-a-year paid to Mr Johnston while a special advisor (spad) to the first minister – despite the revelation that he was running crucial aspects of the DUP while taxpayers employed him as a temporary civil servant.

Documents released by the RHI Inquiry show that in an email to former DUP health minister Jim Wells in September 2015, Mr Johnston described himself as the “line manager” of the DUP’s chief spin doctor John Robinson, who happens to be his brother-in-law.

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Leaked emails give an insight into how his power ranged across the DUP, approving everything from the design of election posters, to clearing election literature and party advertising, to handling quotations for the purchase of party equipment and even dealing with requests for holiday leave from staff in DUP headquarters.

Mr Wells said that he remembered the email and did not think it out of the ordinary because it was widely understood that Mr Johnston was essentially running the party for the leader as a joint “party enforcer and spad”.

Mr Wells had resigned as health minister five months earlier but said he believed he had a promise from the leadership that he would be rapidly returned to his post. By September, he said it “became quite clear that I wasn’t returning” and he began “bending the ear of John Robinson”.

During that process, he said that “a dispute arose between us because I was asserting the fact I should have been returning and he was saying ‘no, you’re not’. It got quite heated and I questioned John Robinson’s right to have a say in this issue.

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“Then Timothy Johnston intervened and sent me an email stating very clearly that he was John Robinson’s line manager and therefore essentially he was acting with his full authority.”

Initially, Mr Johnston told the RHI Inquiry that there was not a hierarchy of DUP spads, but eventually conceded – after evidence from multiple other witnesses to the contrary – that he was in fact more powerful than other spads.

Mr Wells, who lost the DUP whip two years ago amid a dispute with the leadership, said: “I have never seen one individual exercise as much power in a political party. Not a blade of grass that has grown in the DUP garden in the last 20 years has not been planted, tended and manicured by Timothy Johnston.”

He said that Mr Johnston – who is now the party’s chief executive – is “extremely hard working and intelligent but micromanages everything in the DUP; he acts as chief spad, chief executive and chief whip of the DUP”.

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The South Down MLA said that “the benefit of RHI was that the lid was lifted partially and you saw just how powerful he was – but you are only seeing a slight glimpse of a man who exercises power to an extent that Cummings must be envious”.

When asked why he had not spoken out about the issue until falling out of favour with the party hierarchy, Mr Wells said: “If you’d spoken out against Timmy Johnston, your life wouldn’t have been worth living” and that “people fear Timmy Johnston”.

Neither the DUP nor Mr Johnston responded to Mr Wells’ comments.

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