What does Carrie do next? As chaos and uncertainty swirl around her this weekend, she must be considering what’s ahead.
I’ve never met her, but suspect I’d find Mrs Johnson excellent company. She’s clearly passionate, motivated and engaging. And now in a situation she could never have predicted.
When she and Boris began their romance, Carrie Symonds had a career, financial independence, an entertaining social life and a promising future ahead in politics.
No doubt the notion of being the chatelaine of Downing Street and Chequers – with all the accompanying political influence – would have shimmered on the horizon as her glorious Xanadu.
But it was hardly a dead cert. Boris wasn’t even leader of his party then. And he was married.
When she and Boris began their romance, Carrie Symonds had a career, financial independence, an entertaining social life and a promising future ahead in politics
So how joyful it must have been when it all happened – the General Election, Brexit, children, marriage.
Yet in just a few short years, Carrie Johnson has become one of the most lambasted women in the country.
Her critics claim she possesses the lethal ambition of Lady Macbeth, the extravagance of Marie Antoinette and the persuasive, manipulative tactics of Anne Boleyn. She is now rarely seen in public and her loyal band of allies inside Downing Street – or Carrie’s Court, as it’s called – will be on a war footing.
She has two very small (aka exhausting) children to care for while her much older husband limps on like a wounded stag crashing into every tree in his path.
From the expensive Downing Street flat revamp by Lulu Lytle, to helping stray dogs flee Kabul, to delivering a birthday cake to her husband in the Cabinet office – the blame for Boris’s current predicament has been pinned as much on her as on the Prime Minister himself.
Maybe it would be different if Covid hadn’t left the country so bruised. Maybe at another time, under different circumstances, Boris’s apparent desire to avoid confrontation with his wife wouldn’t have struck such a sour note or attracted constant public attention. But it has.
I’ve never met her, but suspect I’d find Mrs Johnson excellent company writes ANNA SHULMAN
The fact is that Carrie’s huge influence is entirely within Boris’s gift. And it has become a double-edged sword for her.
Boris has said he wants an eight-year term. From Carrie’s perspective, if he achieves that – job done. She will have had a fascinating life as First Lady.
When the world reopens fully, there will be travel and entertaining. She can spend time with her young children. She could even find a more fulfilling part-time role than her slightly weird advisory position at the Aspinall wildlife sanctuary.
And after that? Well, she will still only be 41 with everything to play for. But if, as seems more likely at present, the couple have to look for a new life much sooner, it’s a very different story.
Although Boris can scoop up a great deal of money writing and public speaking after leaving office, he will be a frustrated, diminished man. Not the risk-taking conqueror Carrie fell in love with. Should that time come, I suggest a change of location would be just the ticket.
Carrie should pack up the Samsonites and head for a kinder climate where Boris can reboot the Johnson family coffers and she can get a job herself.
Somewhere their undoubted fame and ambition will be useful currencies, where older men and younger wives are as common as frozen peas. Somewhere Carrie’s taste in interior decoration will seem positively abstemious. A place with good schools, spacious houses, beautiful gardensand excellent wine. Where the children can run barefoot on the beach and where Carrie can explore her love for whales and the ocean.
No better place then, surely, than Harry and Meghan’s Montecito haven in California.
Why fake Rolexes are a real comfort
The luxury watch business is thriving, but so is watch crime.
In LA, there is now a brisk trade in expensive replica Rolexes to counteract the huge number of street robberies. Even at north of £2,000, they are worth a fraction of the original – which the owner leaves at home so that, if attacked, they don’t lose the real thing.
Here in London, the trend is for gangs to stake out victims in upmarket Mayfair hotels and bars, before following them to a quieter spot to make the grab.
Gianni Agnelli, the late male style hero and Fiat boss, always made a point of wearing his watch on the outside of his shirt cuff. It’s a look that’s been copied by many would-be stylish men over the years.
Gianni Agnelli, the late male style hero and Fiat boss, always made a point of wearing his watch on the outside of his shirt cuff
Now I fear such an ostentatious display may just attract the wrong sort of attention.
Unless, of course, you have that other accessory du jour – a security detail.
I can’t get the Covid symptoms I want!
I’VE finally been struck by Covid.
Not much to report other than that I’ve lost my sense of smell, but not my sense of taste. Which is deeply annoying, since I was rather hoping that if I were to lose anything it would be some weight – that being the one and only obvious benefit to food becoming tasteless.
In fact, I am hungry all the time and can’t smell any of the scented candles and diffusers I had hoped might cheer up my isolation.
If only all publishers showed some spine
EVERY day, a new tale of lily-livered behaviour emerges from the world of publishing.
The big firms are distancing themselves from authors at the slightest suggestion that someone, somewhere might object to something they have written.
Thankfully, Orwell Prize-winning author Kate Clanchy – pathetically cancelled by Pan Macmillan for descriptions such as ‘almond shaped eyes’ in her well-regarded memoir Some Kids I Taught And What They Taught Me – has been scooped up by independent publisher Swift Press.
But it’s a crazy state of affairs. I gather many books are now going through ‘sensitivity readings’ before publication – just to check no offence could possibly be given anywhere. How unbelievably dull and ludicrous.
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