Carrie’s priority: clear blue water

A CONSPICUOUS absentee at this year’s conference is Carrie Symonds, right, until recently the Conservatives’ director of communications. The 30-year-old, who has been romantically linked with Boris Johnson, has hardly been seen in public since the former Foreign Secretary confirmed he and his wife of 25 years, Marina Wheeler, were getting a divorce. Symonds, who works for Bloomberg campaigning for cleaner oceans, is in Berbera in Somaliland, where she yesterday tweeted: ‘Pleased to see for myself that the ocean is home to plenty of fish and sea life, but still dismayed to see how much plastic pollution there is here, too.’ One Tory MP, who is no fan of Mr Johnson, said: ‘She couldn’t have picked a place further away from Boris if she tried.’