ONE of Liz Truss's most senior advisers has been suspended, it is being reported.
According to the BBC, Jason Stein will face a formal investigation by the Propriety and Ethics Team at Westminster.
The probe follows allegations that he was responsible for unauthorised negative briefings against former Cabinet ministers.
There was anger from some Conservative MPs over the weekend about briefings from Downing Street sources.
The Sunday Times reported that a No 10 source had told them that Sajid Javid had not been considered for the chancellor role following Kwasi Kwarteng's sacking because he is "s**t".
The Prime Minister’s press secretary did not deny that Stein had been suspended, saying: “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.”
Asked if the special adviser had offered his resignation, the press secretary said: “That’s not my understanding.”
Stein previously worked for Truss when she was chief secretary to the Treasury.
He worked as a media adviser for Jeremy Hunt during his unsuccessful Conservative leadership bid in 2019.
He later became a special adviser to Amber Rudd before working for Prince Andrew as a media adviser.
But the adviser left his role with the royal just before his infamous interview with Emily Maitlis.
He also worked for Truss during her leadership campaign.
Politico reported that it was Stein who had been credited with “turning around Truss’s initially wooden presentational skills”, although one source on rival Rishi Sunak’s campaign team described him as a “Grade A bullshitter”.
Speaking to Politics Home in 2020, Stein said he had “sympathy” for Dominic Cummings – Boris Johnson’s former top adviser – when he became the focus of national media after flouting Covid rules and driving hundreds of miles during lockdown.
“As someone who has very much become the story before, I have sympathy for Dom in that particular respect,” Stein said. “It's not especially fun but it can be an occupational hazard and it is sometimes unavoidable. Increasingly advisers are becoming more and more interesting to people."
It comes just days after Truss heard calls for her chief of staff to resign after it was revealed that before his appointment he tried to lobby the UK Government to meet with a Libyan politician with links to the Russian Wagner Group.
Mark Fullbrook (above) attempted to change UK foreign policy by arranging for two Cabinet ministers to meet Fathi Bashagha, who is associated with the Russian paramilitary group.
The Sunday Times reported that as chief executive of Fullbrook Strategies, he arranged for Bashagha to come to London in June to meet then business secretary Kwarteng and then education secretary Nadhim Zahawi.
Fullbrook had already been in the headlines since starting his role in September as the most senior political appointee in government.
It emerged last month that he was questioned as a witness as part of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) inquiry into alleged bribery in Puerto Rico.
Fullbrook has not been accused of any offence and it has not been claimed that either CT Group, a company he worked for, or Fullbrook knew about the alleged bribery plot.
The UK Government has been approached for comment.
