ONE of Liz Truss’s most senior aides has reportedly been suspended pending an ethics investigation into a brutal briefing against a senior Tory MP.
Jason Stein, a special adviser to the Prime Minister who worked on her Tory leadership campaign, is to face a probe by Whitehall’s Propriety and Ethics Team.
It follows the Sunday Times reporting at the weekend that Ms Truss thought former health secretary and Chancellor Sajid Javid was “s***”, and so had picked Jeremy Hunt as her new Chancellor after sacking Kwasi Kwarteng.
The report said Ms Truss had discounted Mr Javid for the job.
“The Prime Minister laughed out loud at the suggestion,” a source reportedly said.
“She has sat in the Cabinet with Javid for 10 years and she knows who is good and who is s***.”
ITV’s Robert Peston said Mr Javid had been “incandescent” about the remark, and had planned to raise the matter at PMQs today.
He chose not to use the question allotted to him after talking to cabinet secretary Simon Case and securing the suspension and investigation.
However Mr Peston said Mr Stein was confident he cannot be sanctioned, implying others in Downing Street may have been behind the briefing.
After the suspension was reported by Sky and the BBC, it emerged Ms Truss had pulled out of a scheduled visit to Hertfordshire this afternoon which was supposed to include questions from broadcasters.
Asked about Mr Stein’s suspension, No 10 said the Prime Minister had ordered aides to stop “unacceptable” briefings against Tory MPs.
The Prime Minister’s press secretary said: “I am not going to get into individual staffing matters but the Prime Minister has made very clear to her team that some of the sort of briefings that we have seen are completely unacceptable about parliamentary colleagues and they must stop.”
Mr Stein worked for Ms Truss when she was chief secretary to the Treasury, then served as a special adviser to Amber Rudd when she was Work and Pensions Secretary.
In 2019 he was hired by Prince Andrew as a spindoctor to help him make a comeback after the scandal over his friendship with the US millionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
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