Boris Johnson's top adviser claimed Conservative MPs "do not care" about "poorer people" or the NHS, it has emerged.

Dominic Cummings, the controversial former chief of the Vote Leave campaign, joined the new prime minister in Downing Street last week.

A video clip of Mr Cummings speaking at a conference in 2017 has now been unearthed.

"The Tory party is run by people who basically don't care about people like me," Mr Cummings told the Nudgestock conference.

"That's what most people in the country have thought about the Tory party for decades.


"I know a lot of Tory MPs and I'm sad to say the public is basically correct.

"Tory MPs largely do not care about these poorer people, they don't care about the NHS and the public has kind of cottoned on to that."

The appointment of Mr Cummings, once branded a "career psychopath" by former prime minister David Cameron, was already likely to prove contentious with some Conservatives.

Earlier this year, Mr Cummings described the European Research Group of Tory Brexiteer MPs as "useful idiots" for the Remain campaign who "should be treated like a metastasising tumour".

He has also previously branded former Brexit secretary David Davis "thick as mince, lazy as a toad, and vain as Narcissus".

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Mr Cummings, in tandem with Michael Gove - his former boss and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, is overseeing the government's preparations for a no-deal Brexit.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, who fronted a rival Leave campaign during the 2016 EU referendum, has ruled out an electoral pact with the Tories while Mr Cummings is working in Number 10.

"He thinks we're all cretins and members of the lower order," Mr Farage told The Times.

"He has never liked me. He can't stand the ERG. I can't see him coming to any accommodation with anyone.

"He has huge personal enmity with the true believers in Brexit."