Our (stylish) girl in NYC to lead Brexit trade drive
BRITAIN’S first woman consulgeneral in New York has been appointed to one of the Government’s most high-powered posts to help strike post-Brexit trade deals with the rest of the world.
Antonia Romeo, 43, is to be Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Trade.
Her task, with International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, will be to sell Britain abroad as a mecca for inward investment.
The US is Britain’s most important trading partner and Mrs Romeo will be at the forefront of the drive to strike a rapid trade agreement with the Donald Trump’s incoming administration.
In six months as consul-general, she has already made a huge impact. Dr Fox and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson are both huge fans.
As home secretary, Theresa May knew Mrs Romeo when she was director-general for criminal justice in the Ministry of Justice. In September Mrs May addressed the United Nations in New York and there were a series of high-powered events at the consul-general’s Manhattan residence. The two women really clicked.
A senior source said: ‘Theresa was impressed when she was home secretary, and saw in New York what a great job she was doing. She wanted Antonia back in Whitehall to lead the post-Brexit trade drive.’ Downing Street will sign off on the appointment in days.
The appointment is a direct challenge to stuffy Foreign Office mandarins such as Sir Ivan Rogers, who last week quit as ambassador to the EU having never come to terms with the result of June’s referendum.
‘To hell with grey and resigning ambassadors,’ said a supporter of the PM last night. ‘Antonia is fiercely clever, stylish, and utterly committed to her job.’
Crucially, in any pronouncements in public or private, she has also expressed excitement rather than pessimism about Britain’s prospects after leaving the EU.
Mrs Romeo, 43, nee Rice-Evans, was educated privately at North London Collegiate School and £33,000-a-year Westminster School. The mother of a 13-year-old daughter and sons aged 11 and eight, she studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford and economics at the London School of Economics.
After a spell in the private sector at international management consultants Oliver Wyman, where she met her Italian husband John, she joined the Civil Service on a temporary contract as an economist in 2000.
Within six years she was principal private secretary to Labour’s Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, and transferred to the Cabinet Office when David Cameron became prime minister in 2010. In 2015 she became director-general of Cameron’s Economic and Domestic Secretariat in the Cabinet Office.
When her husband’s job with Oliver Wyman moved to the US in October 2015 she became Britain’s envoy to the US technology industries. In June she was leaving a plane in San Francisco when the referendum results started swinging to Brexit.
She later said that, at that point, she realised how much the consul job would grow.
When she explained the Brexit vote to her eight-year-old son Rocco, she said: ‘Imagine you’re in a club with friends where you do your homework together, and the club would protect you against bullies. Well, now you’ve left that club, but you can still have the benefits of being friends with the club members.’
Like Mrs May with her trademark kitten heels, the elegantly dressed Mrs Romeo is rarely seen out of snakeskin Louboutins. The first British woman consul-general in 231 years in New York, she has already made her mark on the city and its fashion scene.
Last summer she hosted a reception to mark the centenary of British Vogue with the editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman.
Dressed in a gown by British designer Jenny Packham, whose clients include Angeline Jolie and Dame Helen Mirren, she mixed with newlyweds Jerry Hall and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, model Alexa Chung, and celebrity photographer Josh Olins. His recent subjects have included the Duchess of Cambridge. She was also pictured with actress Joanna Lumley at a lunch thrown by the editor of Cosmopolitan for the Absolutely Fabulous stars.
Now, as the Government gears up to trigger Article 50, starting formal divorce proceedings from the EU, her appointment at the Department of International Trade will send a frisson through Whitehall.
The high-flyer has leapfrogged many older, more experienced career civil servants and she will be one of the most powerful unelected women in the Government.
‘Antonia will not be like most permanent secretaries. She’s fun but focused, tough, but fair and will have a direct line to the Prime Minister,’ said another source.
In an interview in the autumn, Mrs Romeo, whose office is within sight of the skyscrapers of Wall Street, said: ‘Being consul-general in New York is my dream job. My job has got much bigger.’
Now it’s got even bigger.