Blonde ambition: Carrie Symonds
by our UK correspondent Kevin Scott
Downing Street infighting has led to a purge of two leading male advisers of the embattled Tory prime minister Boris Johnson (aka Alexander Kemal) following protests by the sexually peripatetic prime minister’s latest girlfriend Carrie Symonds and her (mainly) female supporters, which include Number Ten policy chief Munira Mirza and the hapless Home Secretary Priti Patel.
Lee Cain, a former tabloid journalist who was Johnson’s PR man, and chief special adviser Dominic Cummings, the men behind the successful Vote Leave EU vote held in 2016, both resigned as Carrie Symonds backed a former BBC and Guardian journalist Allegra Stratton for the top media job at Number Ten.
The surprise move came after intense jockeying around who would call the media shots as the Brexit negotiations reach a critical point and the country embarks upon another damaging ‘China Virus’ lockdown.
Symonds herself had briefly worked as the Tory party’s communication chief before moving into Downing Street when her current boyfriend finally became prime minister last year.
Along with Stratton, she now wants Johnson to drop the "abrasive and uncompromising" stance favoured by Cummings and Cain that won over so many white working-class voters recently, and embrace the cuddly multicultural campaigning style he favoured whilst London Mayor between 2008 and 2016.
Symonds herself first became involved with the Tory party in 2007 after graduating from Warwick University despite an ambition to become an actress. And between 2007 and 2010, with a previous boyfriend, she attended functions held by the Traditional Britain Group (TBG), a hard right ginger group formed in 2001 that acts as an organisational bridge between the Tory Party and nationalist political elements both in the UK and overseas firmly positioned beyond contemporary ‘mainstream’ conservatism.
Cummings vs Cummies -- Cummies won
Over the years, prominent members of UKIP and For Britain have spoken at TBG meetings, whilst speakers from overseas have included leading members of Germany’s anti-immigration AfD party and Richard Spencer, a key alt-right ideologue from the United States.
Such is the pivotal position of the TBG that successive meetings have been regularly infiltrated by the far-left Searchlight organisation and its successor body Hope not Hate, which is closely aligned with the UK Labour party.
Both Searchlight and Hope not Hate operatives always take a keen interest in who attends TBG meetings in the hope of “exposing” both supporters and speakers.
In 2013, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, now a leading member of Johnson’s government, became a media casualty after he spoke as a guest of honour at the TBG’s annual dinner that year. He later apologised and described his attendance as a “mistake”.
No doubt, any association that Carrie Symonds had with the TBG is also a ‘mistake’. Expect her new best friend Allegra to be spinning that explanation like mad very shortly.
Having said that, it is comforting to think, as someone who voted for Brexit as she did back in 2016, that her heart was in the right place when she attended her first TBG meeting in London all those years ago.
Nigel Farage also has something to say about the new leadership of the Tory Party...
Symonds, the "Alt-Right years," with boyfriend Oliver Haiste
Nigel Farage also has something to say about the new leadership of the Tory Party...
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— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) November 15, 2020
After recent events, a proper Brexit is now in peril. This is why... pic.twitter.com/56aa1UHbxu
