It’s up to me! Aide claimed veto on what the PM said

FORMER Downing Street chief of staff Fiona Hill was so dominant she dictated the content of Theresa May’s speeches, an insider has claimed.

Alasdair Palmer, who was the Prime Minister’s speechwriter when she was home secretary, said Miss Hill would overrule the content of speeches even if Mrs May had specifically said she wanted it included.

On one occasion, the adviser said baldly: ‘It’s up to me.’

Mr Palmer said Miss Hill and her joint chief of staff, Nick Timothy, were a ‘gruesome twosome’ who ruled with a rod of iron and could be ‘breathtakingly rude’.

Both resigned amid pressure from senior Tories in the wake of Mrs May’s humiliation in this month’s general election, when she lost her majority rather than increasing it. The pair worked for Mrs May when she was at the Home Office between 2010 and 2016. Writing in The Sunday Times, Mr Palmer said: ‘When I started work as her speechwriter, I had a desk just outside the home secretary’s office.

‘I thought it would be easy to walk into her office and talk over speeches with her. ‘Wrong. I had reckoned without her advisers Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill (though back then she was Fiona Cunningham). They must have had a role in hiring me, so I expected them to be friendly and helpful, but I found them hostile and difficult to deal with almost from the start.

‘They guarded access to May and they prevented almost everyone from getting to see her except on their terms. In my case those terms did not include my having any contact that was not mediated by them.

‘Nevertheless, I occasionally got to see May on her own.

‘In one meeting, for instance, we discussed a speech she was going to give to the Society of Editors. She told me what she wanted to say, and I made sure I put it in the speech.

‘When it was finished, the speech went to Timothy and Hill, as all speeches did. Hill approached me with a frown. “Have you been talking to the home secretary?” she asked. I had, I admitted, it was very useful to find out exactly what she wanted to say – I had put it in the speech.

‘“I thought so,” responded Hill. “But I don’t think she should say these things”. I said I thought that was surely up to her.

‘“It’s up to me,” was the reply. I was too aghast to know what to say in response.’