Carrie doesn’t deserve the pasting she’s had over PM’S wallpaper
CAN we get one thing straight? Inconveniently for those indignant defenders of the nation’s favourite department store, it wasn’t Carrie Symonds who complained about the “John Lewis furniture nightmare of the May years” when she clapped eyes on the Downing Street flat she and the PM share.
This line appeared in a Tatler article written by Anne Mcelvoy, a magazine which is always loftily and entertainingly snobbish about nice things that ordinary people like.
It’s fake news. It’s nonsense. But the idea persists that Carrie sits around plotting, picking colours and dissing John Lewis while her favourite designer Lulu Lytle has free rein to do up the apartment like an Ottoman Empire harem.
Variously nicknamed Princess
Nut Nuts (by arch enemy Dominic Cummings) and now Carrie Antoinette – after the unlucky Queen of France who is supposed to have said, “let them eat cake” – Symonds has also been compared with Lady Macbeth. Of course she has. Hasn’t every woman who ever put her head above the parapet?
She’s also prissily referred to as the “Prime Minister’s fiancee”, which technically she is. But come on: is this 1958? She and Boris Johnson live together, they have a child together, as well as that dog. She’s the “Prime Minister’s partner” until such time as they get round to tying the knot.
Yet “fiancee” it always is. A subtle put down. It’s another example of what Samantha Cameron described as the media’s “flagrantly sexist” treatment of Symonds. “People are playing the girl not the ball, knowing she can’t defend herself,” growled former sports minister Tracey Crouch. I don’t know what it means either but I think it’s pro-carrie.
WHEN Carrie appeared on the scene she was lazily assumed to be the token blonde mistress, 24 years younger than Boris and his latest bit of totty. Possibly a bit dim.
Then it turned out that not only was she adequately intelligent she was also the daughter of an unconventional family steeped in journalism and politics. She’d worked for the Tory Party, had been a spad (a youthful “special adviser”) and had a proper job with Oceana, a non-profit conservation organisation. So a sort of woke Tory.
She earned approval because having been targeted by the black cab rapist Johnworboys she campaigned against his release on parole.there was that noisy altercation between her and Boris in the flat they shared followed by several chin-stroking comment pieces about domestic violence with Carrie cast as the victim.
But neither the “dumb blonde” nor the “Metoo heroine” labels have stuck and now she is firmly installed in Downing Street and at the heart of the furore over sleaze and soft furnishings. Lucrezia
Borgia with a paint chart.
Boris told aides the cost of doing up the flat was “spiralling out of control” and said Carrie was buying “gold wallpaper”. “I can’t afford it”, he moaned and embarked on a course of action (we don’t yet know who stumped up the 58 grand and under what terms and conditions) which may yet cause him serious damage. It’s another fine mess entirely of his own making which is rapidly gaining momentum.
Dominic Cummings (spilling more beans than an exploding Heinz factory) says that last year the PM attempted to stop an official inquiry into the leaking of details of the second lockdown because the person Cummings identified as the leaker was Henry Newman, allegedly the “chatty rat”, who was a close friend of Symonds.
“This will cause me very serious problems with Carrie,” Boris allegedly said. Ever the hapless male in the clutches of an extravagant, high-maintenance and interfering woman. Or are all these briefings and leaks mere smoke and mirrors designed to make her seem a nag and him seem hen-pecked?
The PM’S need to be liked is surely his greatest weakness and the reason he’s in trouble now. The unelected Symonds shouldn’t meddle. But it takes two to tango. She’s tough and wants her own way. But he’s the Prime Minister and must be tougher.
Westminster knew Dom would exact revenge. It was just a matter of time. But does anyone really think this means curtains for the PM? Or even a nice pair of ready-made John Lewis blinds?