BBC man and City Hall aide

A Welsh speaker who grew up in the Rhondda, Guto Harri began his career in Welsh-language radio before moving into network radio and television and presenting programmes for BBC Wales.

After moving to London, he presented BBC programmes such as The World at One, Westminster Live, Despatch Box

and The World This Weekend.

Mr Harri, 55, who studied PPE at Oxford, covered the collapse of Communism in Romania, Czechoslovakia and East Germany before reporting on the Gulf War. He became the BBC’s chief political correspondent, before leaving it in 2007. He then joined public relations agency FleishmanHillard as a senior policy adviser.

In 2008, he was appointed communications director for Boris Johnson’s mayoral administration at London City Hall.

He left in 2012 to join News UK as a director of communications and corporate affairs. In 2014, he was appointed as a trustee for the Welsh-language channel S4C.

In May last year, Mr Harri joined GB News as a co-host of a weekly news and discussion programme. The next month, he took the knee on air to support the England football team’s anti-racism gesture. There was a backlash from viewers and GB News suspended Mr Harri indefinitely for “failing to maintain the editorial standards expected by the network”. He resigned shortly afterwards.

He has since been on the board of Hawthorn Advisors, a communications consultancy, and is a volunteer crew member for the RNLI.

Last month, Mr Harri said that the revelations about parties at No10 were “toxic” for Mr Johnson. He told Newsnight: “The problem at the moment is that nobody seems to be getting a grip.”