Politics

Johnson orders aides to send him shorter ‘easy read’ memos

Boris Johnson’s aides have been told to send the Prime Minister shorter ‘easy read’ memos otherwise he won’t read them.

Civil servants have been ordered to cut the number of documents put into the prime minister’s red box and limit them to just two sides of A4, the Times has reported.

Members of the Downing Street policy unit were told to provide “weekend reading” for the prime minister on key aspects of policy.

But a source said: “They’ve been told it should be an easy read: no more than four pages, or he’s never going to read it. Two pages is preferable.”

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Another said Dominic Cummings is driving the changes.

“Box submissions have to be brief if he is going to read it. If they’re overly long or overly complex, Dom sends them back with savage comments”, they said.

The pair were also accused of running “government by ADHD” — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Intelligence

Elsewhere, MI5 chiefs have been reportedly reducing the amount of intelligence they pass to Priti Patel because they do not have “have confidence in her abilities”.

According to reports the Home Secretary is “extremely difficult to deal with” because she does not “grasp the subtleties of intelligence”.

Security service personnel apparently regularly ‘roll their eyes’ following interventions made by Ms Patel during high level meetings.

Related: Environment Secretary refuses to rule out chlorinated chicken in UK

Jack Peat

Jack is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE). He has contributed articles to VICE, Huffington Post and Independent and is a published author. Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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