Inside the court of Carrie Symonds, princess of whales

Carrie Symonds, the Prime Minister’s fiancée, ‘gets’ the media. That’s what her friends are quick to tell you. She’s a PR professional. If she doesn’t like the thrust of a story, she lets you know. She contacts journalists to tell them how ‘disappointed’ she is in their sloppy work. And she doesn’t seem all that scared of senior newspaper editors, perhaps because her father co-founded the Independent. It’s said she even thinks she can ‘edit what goes in the Mail on Sunday’.

When the Times ran a silly piece suggesting she had ‘grown weary’ of Dilyn, her rescue dog, and that the poor creature was facing a ‘reshuffle’, she is said to have interrupted a Cobra meeting to ask Boris to help her respond to the allegations. Never mind the pandemic! Carrie’s cutesy image was at stake. ‘The dog isn’t that popular in No. 10,’ confessed one source. ‘Nobody wants to tell Carrie this.