Can Carrie make Boris woke?

Philip May seems a decent cove. He’s been stoic and loyal but I can’t help hoping that the next prime minister’s spouse will be a bit sparkier — and give us something to talk about other than Brexit.

I suspect that it will be a woman. If so, who? We have Lucia, Jeremy Hunt’s wife. He famously could not remember whether she was Japanese or Chinese. Then there’s Dominic Raab’s Brazilian wife, Erika, a marketing executive at Google. We discovered from a newspaper profile that the Raabs have a duck-egg blue and cream kitchen in their Surrey home. Sarah Vine, wife of Michael Gove, is well known for her acidic columns in the Daily Mail. If she makes it to Downing Street, will she be allowed to keep writing them?

The bookies’ clear favourite to be prime minister is Boris Johnson, which raises the question of whether he would be accompanied by the new woman in his life (and possibly soon third wife), Carrie Symonds. I’ve been intrigued by the Boris-Carrie story ever since, one summer’s evening last year, I spotted her arriving at a party in London. Boris, then the foreign secretary, snuck in after her, looking animated. A few months passed, then news broke of their relationship — and his divorce.

Carrie’s ascent could end up being one for the history books: the former Tory director of communications who might now become Britain’s most senior political consort. What’s most striking is that, even in bitchy SW1, few people have a bad word to say about her. The Westminster bubble loathes Boris, but loves her. She (I’m reliably informed) ‘defines what it means to be a millennial conservative’. I’ve noticed political types go quite gooey when they talk about her. One MP says that they are backing Boris primarily because Carrie is behind him.