Project Fear enforcer whose reward for failure was a gong Andrew Pierce
FOr three years, Daniel Korski was one of the most trusted and powerful members of David Cameron’s privileged Downing Street chumocracy. A champion of ever-closer links to brussels, he had a ringside seat at the marathon round of late-night meetings in brussels during which Cameron tried and failed to forge a new deal to deliver victory in last year’s eU referendum.
Korski was prepared to resort to desperate measures to try to ensure Project Fear won the day. To the astonishment of even some of Cameron’s most loyal allies, he persuaded the then prime minister to embrace social media networks such as the dating site Tinder to encourage young people to vote remain.
Members of bite the ballot, a youth campaign group, along with representatives of Google and buzzFeed, the trendy news website, attended a meeting at Downing Street a month before the vote last June. It was chaired by Korski, who was deputy director of the Downing Street policy unit.
‘I was responsible for putting Cameron on Tinder ... when I tried to reach younger voters through apps and sites like Uber and badoo,’ he said after the referendum.
There is a bitter irony in the fact that Korski, who persuaded the PM to flirt with Uber for the benefit of the referendum, is now being sucked ever deeper into the growing scandal over the way senior figures in Downing Street lobbied on behalf of the American internet taxi firm just a few months before the eU poll took place.
THe Daily Mail has revealed that Korski, 39, was assigned to ensure that then London mayor boris Johnson did not upset the Californian web company. In a sign of the immense power he wielded, Korski, who spoke with the full authority of Cameron, summoned Johnson to tell him to lay off Uber.
Though his name is not known to the wider public, few Tory MPs will be surprised that Daniel Korski is involved in the Uber controversy. ‘He operated in the shadows in Downing Street, and was a highly experienced exponent of the black arts of spin and manipulation,’ said one senior Tory last night.
Korski was brought into Downing Street by the etonian ed Llewellyn, another fully paid-up member of the chumocracy, who was Cameron’s chief of staff from 2005. Korski, who helped draft Cameron’s final speech on the steps of Downing Street before he left for the last time, was best man at Llewellyn’s wedding.
before Downing Street, he worked for bar- oness Ashton, the obscure Labour peer who became the eU’s first high representative for foreign affairs. In Korski she had a willing accomplice. He was described witheringly by one Tory MP as the most ‘ardent eU enthusiast to ever work for a Tory prime minister’. In fact, some MPs doubt whether Korski was even a Conservative at all.
He lives in a £1million terrace house in Camden, the north London borough that had one of the biggest remain votes in the referendum. It’s a highly politicised pro-eU household because his partner Fiona McIlwham, 43, shares his passion for europe.
Once one of the youngest british ambassadors, when she was appointed to Albania in 2009 aged 35, she is now senior adviser to the director-general of eU enlargement.
LAST spring Korski, once again operating in the shadows, was a pivotal figure in the defenestration of John Longworth as director-general of the british Chamber of Commerce (bCC). After Longworth announced himself a brexiteer, Korski – then Cameron’s £93,000-a-year eyes and ears on the eU – hit the telephone to the ten-strong bCC board. Within 24 hours, Longworth was suspended from his £250,000 post. Two days later he resigned as Korski maintained the pressure.
Despite his own key role in the failure of Cameron’s referendum, Korski was rewarded with a Cbe in the now discredited Downing Street resignation honours list. This was despite working for Cameron for just three years.
Since he left Downing Street, Korski has been trying to raise millions for investment in public sector technology products. He’s also written a long article on the referendum, conceding: ‘Our biggest mistake was our failure to deliver the kind of deal we – and especially the media – had given the impression was possible. From the moment Cameron promised a referendum we should have built up the case for eU co-operation, preparing the electoral battlefield we would have to fight on. We didn’t, so a better organised, more passionate adversary won.’
Until the revelation of the Uber lobbying at the weekend, Korski presumably thought his efforts to bolster the fortunes of the taxi firm were more successful – and certainly more discreet.