BABY JOY FOR BORIS AND CARRIE
...and the happy couple are engaged too
PRIME MINISTER Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds have announced that they are engaged and expecting a baby in early summer.
The pair ended weeks of speculation late yesterday afternoon with the double announcement.
Mr Johnson, 55, and 31-year-old Miss
Symonds made history as the first unmarried couple to officially live together in Downing Street when they moved in last year.
In a surprise post on Instagram, under her nickname Apples, Ms Symonds said: “I wouldn’t normally post this kind of thing on here but I wanted my friends to find out from me.
“Many of you already know but for my friends that still don’t, we got engaged at the end of last year... and we’ve got a baby hatching early summer.”
She added that she felt “incredibly blessed”.
Ms Symonds, a conservationist and former Conservative Party communications chief, worked on Mr Johnson’s successful re-election bid as mayor of London in 2012. They were romantically linked last year.
This will be the third marriage for Mr Johnson, who already has five children.
Boris’s father, reality TV star Stanley, 79, recently said he “admired enormously” Carrie for her charity work with animals and the environment – and gave his blessing to their union, adding at the prospect of a wedding: “What a nice thought.” Former Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson was one of the first to congratulate the duo.
Former sports minister Tracey Crouch said she was “over the moon” and described Ms Symonds as her “friend and fellow animal welfare warrior”.
Ex-scottish secretary David Mundell suggested that “Gretna Green is a great place for a wedding”, while international trade minister Conor Burns described the announcement as a “double dose of good news”.
Senior Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns greeted the news with excitement. She said: “I’m delighted for the happy couple, especially for Carrie, it being her first child.
“As a mum myself to a toddler, it’s the most amazing experience and the best job in the world being a parent, and good luck to them both.”
Ms Symonds, who gained first class honours in Theatre Studies and History of Art at the University of Warwick, after attending Godolphin and Latymer School, in west London, has acted as a special adviser for senior Conservative figures including ex-chancellor Sajid Javid. Mr Javid, who quit last month because he would not agree to Downing Street demands to sack key aides, said the couple’s announcement is “wonderful news!”.
Ms Symonds has also advised Zac Goldsmith, who is now the “Minister for Pacific and the Environment”. He also posted his “massive congratulations”.
The couple are keeping tight-lipped about their wedding plans.
No date has been disclosed and they have not yet shared details of the proposal.
Last week it emerged that Sarah Vaughan-brown, a former ITN communications chief, had been hired as Ms Symonds’ personal adviser.
Ms Symonds’s spokeswoman declined to reveal where the proposal took place and whether Mr Johnson got down on one knee to deliver it.
Labour figures were less celebratory about the news, which came on the same day Sir Philip Rutnam, the most senior civil servant at the Home Office, resigned and launched a scathing attack on Home Secretary Priti Patel.
Sceptical Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, a former MP of 26 years, said on Twitter: “Wonder why they announced it today?”
And Labour MP Charlotte Nichols said it was “truly remarkable that the announcement just happened to be on the day of the unprecedented resignation”. ITV political
editor Robert Peston also struck a wry note, saying he was sure the timing was “just a total coincidence” but said that it was “certainly convenient”.
Former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell did not hide his scorn for what he saw as an attempt to manipulate the news agenda, saying that people would be happy to have a Prime Minister “who took the floods seriously” and “had a real Brexit strategy”.
Sarah Vine, the wife of Michael Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, appealed for a gentle tone.
She said she would “just like to remind everyone that this is [Ms Symonds’] first baby, regardless of anything else,” adding: “Let’s be kind to the pregnant lady, shall we?”
The new arrival will be the third baby born to a sitting PM in recent times. More than a century-and-ahalf had passed without a baby being born to a PM before Tony Blair’s wife Cherie gave birth to son Leo in 2000.
David Cameron and his wife Samantha welcomed daughter Florence Rose Endellion Cameron into the world in
2010, just three months after he had formed the coalition with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats.
BRITAIN will wish the PM and his partner Carrie Symonds every happiness as they look forward to the arrival of a baby in early summer and their own wedding.
There are few greater joys than the birth of a child, and the patter of tiny feet in Downing St will bring a new lightness to the most challenging days.
The presence of a baby in the corridors of power should inspire everyone to work to ensure Britain’s children grow up in a nation that is stronger, healthier and fairer than ever before.