What’s next for Carrie?
MR LIZ TRUSS, also known as Hugh O’leary, could find the lost city of Atlantis, cure male pattern baldness and run over a panda bear in one wild night and still generate fewer headlines than his predecessor at No.10, Carrie Johnson. Few have endured the abuse hurled at the 34-year-old former Tory comms guru. Boris Johnson’s own team infamously called her ‘Lady Macbeth’, ‘Princess Nut Nut’ and ‘Carrie Antoinette’.
Yet many expect big things from her now that she’s exited the famous old door. ‘What next for Carrie?’ is occupying strategy groups, NGOS and agents up and down the land. When she left No.10, Samantha Cameron started fashion label Cefinn; Cherie Blair became a global champion of women’s rights; and across the pond, Michelle Obama has arguably outshone Barack with her best-selling memoir, Becoming, and chart-topping podcast.
Carrie has her own pulling power. She stole the show leaving No.10, sashaying away in a billowing fuchsia silk maxidress (a £485 purchase from Harmur). From upcycled The Vampire’s Wife outfits to the £800 Falconetti dress she wore to the G7, the ‘Carrie effect’ is worth its weight in clothes racks. Scriptwriters also recognise her wattage. In new Sky drama This England, which airs this month, it is Ophelia Lovibond’s Carrie who outshines Kenneth Branagh’s Boris Johnson.
Her friends say she’s exhausted by the fame game. ‘I can’t see the Carrie Johnson podcast happening,’ says one. ‘That’s not her. She’s a young woman and a mother. She wants to live her life without being under the No.10 microscope.’ They say she’ll first want to spend time with their children, Wilfred, two, and nine-month-old Romy, as well as doing her conservation charity work with the Aspinall Foundation, where she is communications chief.
But they admit that she’s itching to stand up for herself again. Both she and Boris left No.10 beneath a cloud of ignominy after the alleged transgressions of Partygate, so moving the dial is imperative. ‘Rather than being Carrie Johnson, she’ll be Carrie Symonds,’ her friend says. ‘She did have a very successful career, so I think she’ll want to continue doing that.’ In November, for instance, you’ll see her play a major part in moving elephants ‘from Kent to Kenya’ as the Aspinall Foundation looks to rewild 13 captive-born zoo elephants 4,400 miles, in what they hope will be a landmark move against British zookeeping practices. Carrie ‘wants to be able to make change’ on her own terms. ‘She’s always said this was Boris’s ride, not hers. She needs to have her own car keys.’
Carrie’s appeal is her passion and her unorthodoxy. ‘It’s like the old Miles Davis quote,’ says Mark Borkowski, a PR agent. ‘The people who choose to play with the notes that other people don’t are far more powerful and interesting.’ The rare thing about Carrie, he says, is that she is careful, even reticent, about public speaking, ‘like Kate Moss’. ‘Any time she’s ever done something in the media it surprises people and makes them reconsider her.’
She knows the power of speaking up. Carrie once testified against the black cab rapist John Worboys (she has spoken publicly about being targeted by the taxi driver when she was 19) and campaigned against his early release.
‘She’s her own woman,’ says Isabel Spearman, Samantha Cameron’s former adviser at No.10. She thinks Carrie will have mixed feelings about leaving Downing Street – but will find it freeing. ‘[Samantha] said that Theresa May caught her dancing around having a beer and smoking a few rollies as she packed up to leave,’ she recalls of their own exit in 2016. ‘It’s the end of an era. But I don’t doubt Carrie will make her own decisions about what comes next. I think she is in charge of her own future.’