Carrie Symonds is no fool. One way or another she is at the heart of the No 10 story

RULE number one from your columnist who has covered the role of Downing Street consorts for over two decades of storms in teacups: if they become involved as political consorts, they are bossy and unaccountable; if they say nothing, they are derided as Zara-wearing cyphers, trying hard to sound like Mrs Normal while living a cloistered life in the most heavily guarded private address in Britain.

Into this saga of court and courtiers strides Carrie Symonds, who confuses matters by being a former special adviser and central office comms boss — as well as the Prime Minister’s fiancée and lockdown hair trimmer. Now Symonds is under fire, with one old-school Tory grouping calling for inquiries about her role. The charge of over-influence has grown louder ever since she lined up with the staffers outside Downing Street to greet Johnson’s confident re-election. It was a gesture intended to look modest about her place but also made clear that she saw herself as part of the political “machine” from the get-go.

Peering inside the Symonds machinery-of-state for an upcoming profile in Tatler, it is clear to me that she influences Johnson a lot. There is not, however, much proof that she imposes views he would not have held himself or ousted anyone he was keen to defend. One of the political attributes which attracted Johnson to an ambitious staffer was her desire, as one aide put it, to “sharpen up his message and discipline”. I’d suggest this is still how it rolls.

Are his burnished climate-change credentials down to her influence? His comments yesterday, defending advocates of climate action who are accused of being “tree-hugging tofu-munchers”, effectively mocked the more predictable jibes of some of his old columns. But he is not really a reactionary in this regard. The difference Symonds makes is that, for her generation of potential Tory recruits, concern for the future of Mother Earth needs to be a sustainable match for conservatism.

The raw politics of this are obvious in a year when the UK hosts G7 and the UN’s climate-change conference. A leader accused of being inward looking is not dim enough to pass over a chance to make “global Britain” look like a priority as Joe Biden foregrounds climate change and Labour still struggles to unite its urban green voters with its old industrial base.

That leaves the more aggrieved charge is that Symonds is a whimsical hirer and firer of No 10 staff — though I reckon she is more an accelerator than initiator. It did not take her wearing her “Boleyn headdress” to heave Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain out of No 10,: Cummings achieved that feat himself, first by alienating Tory MPs, then by a failure to sound remotely penitent for his ill-judged trip to Barnard Castle in lockdown.

Are the new appointments cronyism? It could not harm Baroness (Simone) Finn, a veteran of the Cabinet Office under David Cameron, that she hosted Symonds’s 30th birthday and brings a mix of gregariousness and high-tensile steel to the role of deputy chief of staff. But the real reason these changes are afoot is that the Number 10 operation is erratic with a poorly run “org chart” of overlapping and contested roles. That reflects Johnson’s own tendency to view the party and senior colleagues as vectors for his power and lack of interest in deepening relationships.

The best-functioning Number 10 operations have had savvy gatekeepers to maintain support, soothe battered egos and dilute strife in the ranks. In this case, raiding the old Gove team looks like a mixture of calculated gamble. More dramas and future turf wars may follow, but at least these appointments are going to people with some organisational and diplomatic skills, assets which have not been in over-abundance.

In truth, some aspects of the Carrie ascendancy look less sensible than others. The Aspinall Foundation connection, via her new job running its communications, brings a host of trailing wires to be easily combined with a role as PM’s spouse-to-be. That is before we get to the intricacies of its re-wilding theology which returns Kent-born gorillas to Gabon and is, to put it mildly, at the adventurous end of animal rights.

But when it comes to dealing with the eventful human zoo in Downing Street, Symonds is no fool. One way or the other, she’s at the heart of the story.

It did not take Carrie wearing her Boleyn headdress to heave Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain out of No 10