Carrie Johnson is, depending on your point of view, the queen bee of No 10 or the spider at the centre of the Downing Street web🕸️thetimes.co.uk/article/carrie…
One former Downing Street adviser says: “From wallpaper to parties, the holiday in Mustique or the evacuation of animals from Afghanistan, everything leads back to the advice the prime minister is receiving from his spouse and the fact that he is following it”
The 33-year-old mother of two was also at the lockdown-busting parties in the No 10 garden, muddying the distinction between work and play thetimes.co.uk/article/welcom…
She is reported to have given several allies the access code to the Downing Street flat, where top-secret documents were left lying around. And her influence over government policy has become increasingly apparent
Cummings accused Carrie of running a “parallel briefing operation from the flat” during the pandemic. Boris “hasn’t got the balls to say to her, ‘Listen, I’m prime minister and this is what I’m doing,’” he told New York Magazine 
Carrie is the first prime ministerial spouse who has had a career in politics. As the Conservative Party’s director of communications and a special adviser, before becoming a leader’s wife, she has her own political networks and she is not afraid to use them
But in the court of King Boris the influence of Queen Carrie is so great that even some of her old friends think the prime minister’s wife must take her share of the blame for the culture in No 10
Dominic Dyer, who has campaigned with her on animal welfare issues, says: “They were drawn together because they are very similar — in some ways shy, in other ways extrovert. Both have focused on enjoying the trappings of power but don’t realise how that’s perceived”
One female senior Tory points to the cliquiness cultivated by the prime minister’s wife.
🗣️:“It’s like Mean Girls. You are either in her group or you’re not, and even if you are friends with her it’s all about your usefulness”
🗣️:“It’s like Mean Girls. You are either in her group or you’re not, and even if you are friends with her it’s all about your usefulness”
Like Daisy and Tom in F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the Johnsons are “careless people”. One former colleague who knows them well says they are “damaged souls” who are drawn together by their dysfunctional childhoods
Read more here👇thetimes.co.uk/article/carrie…
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