“It’s develop into extremely bloated. It’s acquired big numbers of individuals, big numbers of groups. And significantly on the entire, the form of deep state, nationwide safety facet, disaster administration, has develop into in all kinds of how extraordinarily opaque and successfully utterly invisible to any political determine, together with the prime minister.

“So it was extremely difficult to know in Number 10 who exactly in the Cabinet Office was doing what, whose responsibility it was, who were we supposed to talk to to get action and that was critical, particularly in the first couple of months (of the pandemic).”

Lee Cain, a key Cummings ally who was director of communications in Downing Street at first of the pandemic, was earlier quizzed in regards to the “rude, dismissive, and aggressive” tone adopted by Mr Cummings.

Asked if there was a “macho culture”, he replied: “There’s an issue inside Mr Johnson’s senior crew, there was a scarcity of range in gender, socio-economic, minorities.