Dominic Cummings has admitted for the first time he orchestrated Boris Johnson’s downfall.

The ex No 10 chief of staff claims he brought down the former Prime Minister because he was “vandalising the country”.

He also took a swipe at Mr Johnson’s wife Carrie and says it was unacceptable for her and her friends to be “controlling Number 10 and with all the madness that entailed”.

Admitting he was the man behind exposing the Partygate scandal, Cummings tells the Sunday Times: “Yeah, I mean obviously,” he says.

“I orchestrated it with a bunch of other people in Westminster who agreed with me that leaving him rattling around No 10 making a whole set of appalling decisions should be ended as soon as we could do.”

Describing his reasons he added: “We had a sort of responsibility for it, right? We won the 2019 election.

“We told people to vote for it and we put him in. And then if you put someone in and then they kind of go off the reservation and start actually vandalising the country, well, you’ve obviously got a responsibility to do something about it.”

Cummings was sacked by Mr Johnson from his role in November 2020, a few months after being savaged over his decision to drive to the north-east of England and stop at Barnard Castle while ill with Covid.

He admits revenge may have been a factor: “Well, I mean, obviously there’s all kinds of personal and emotional aspects to all of these things.

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“But the fundamental thing was we didn’t win the 2019 election so Boris could rattle around being an idiot with Carrie and her friends controlling No 10 and with all the madness that that entailed.

“So my view, and the view of the other people who helped me remove him, was that it’s just an unpleasant task but it’s a cleaning the sewers sort of role. No one wants to spend their time doing something like that, but you’ve got a responsibility to do it.”

Cummings admits his nemesis was not Mr Johnson but his wife, Carrie, to whom he attributes his downfall.

“From her point of view, once we won the election that was it, we’d fulfilled the thing that she wanted, which was her and Boris are now there for four years.

“She knew Boris was obviously not going to be in charge of a lot of things that are happening in the government, because he’s not interested in it. So [she thought], ‘Why would I let Dom be the person in charge? Why shouldn’t it be me [Carrie] and my friends in charge?’ You can sort of see her logic.”