Changed your tune! Guto Harri is appointed as new No10 comms chief… just weeks after blasting Boris over the ‘unforgiveable’ parties and suggesting he makes ‘grovelling apology’
- Guto Harri, 54, is a staunch Remainer and ex-BBC reporter who became lobbyist
- His last job in journalism was at GB News – he left shortly after taking knee on air
- Harri is a remainer who said that Brexit was ‘act of self-harm’ that ‘destroyed’ PM
- He’s also criticised his boss’ failure to ‘get a grip’ on ‘toxic’ partygate scandal
Boris Johnson’s new No 10 spin doctor has been one of the Prime Minister’s biggest critics, accusing him of being dishonest about Brexit and failing to ‘get a grip’ on the ‘toxic’ Partygate scandal that has left him fighting for his political life.
Guto Harri, 54, a staunch Remainer and former BBC reporter who served as a key aide to Mr Johnson while he was Mayor of London, takes on the role in a move the Prime Minister said would ‘strengthen (his) Cabinet’.
But just a fortnight ago he was laying into his new boss about his integrity and once said he was ‘digging his political grave’ by joking about ‘suicide vests’ and being ‘sexually incontinent’.
Speaking to Newsnight on January 26 about party-after-party on Mr Johnson’s watch he said: ‘The problem is that nobody seems to be getting a grip, and the prime minister has to invite an inquiry to conclude what went on in his own house’.
Harri, who left GB News under a cloud after taking the knee on air to support the BLM movement, also said he holds ‘very different views’ on Brexit from his boss and described leaving the EU as ‘a catastrophic act of self-harm for the UK’ that he believed had ‘destroyed’ Johnson ‘because nobody genuinely believes that he was sincere about it.’
Mr Harri worked for Boris at City Hall from 2008 to 2012, before working in several communications roles, most recently at Hawthorn Advisors, where he lobbied on behalf of tech giant Huawei, who are banned from the UK’s 5G infrastructure in case they spy for China.
Guto Harri, the prime minister’s new director of communications, arrives in Downing Street with healthy snacks and water for colleagues in his first day in No 10
Mr Harri, pictured with Boris in 2014, worked for him at City Hall for four years before going into communications and lobbying roles
Mr Harri has appeared frequently on the BBC to slam the PM over Brexit and Partygate in particular (pictured last month on Newsnight)
Before taking the job as Mr Johnson’s spokesman over the weekend, speaking to the BBC’s Newscast podcast on January 26, Harri appeared to question how honest the PM is. He admitted that when it came to Mr Johnson’s integrity it was ‘hard to judge and different people will come to different conclusions’.
Boris’ new spin doctor uses first day in the job to lay into ‘gratuitously offensive’ and ‘abusive’ Dominic Cummings
Downing Street’s new director of communications Guto Harri used his first weekend in the role to blast Dominic Cummings on Twitter.
Mr Cummings has made it his aim to remove Boris Johnson from No 10.
On Saturday, Mr Cummings tweeted news of Mr Harri’s appointment and said: ‘So our new boss is a pro- Remain lobbyist who’s said the PM is ‘sexually incontinent’, ‘hugely divisive’, ‘destructive’, ‘dragging the country down’, & picked ‘wrong side’ in referendum. GREAT’.’.
Four hours later Harri, 55, responded, tweeting an article he wrote for GQ magazine in February 2020, where he had predicted Cummings’ demise.
He wrote that Cummingsw as ‘gratuitously offensive’ and ‘abusive’ to junior staff.
He wrote ‘Ask yourselves: would you work for him? Would you hire him? Would his behaviour be tolerated in your school, hospital, regiment, college, company or club? And if not, how long can he really last in such a pivotal role, more demanding than most, more scrutinised than almost any. The next movie is still being written, but we all know how it ends.’
In another article for the magazine in May 2021, Harri said Cummings was a ‘one-trick pony’ and ‘arrogant’.
He said the former top aide to the PM was ‘an ideologue who spent decades focusing myopically on how to get the UK out of the EU, but was ill equipped for the moving targets and multi-tasking of government not to mention the tact, nuance and unavoidable compromise.’
He added: ‘Boris has always underestimated how critical it is to have a fantastic team around him. And I don’t think, even if he can pull this back, he will be allowed to do it unless he promises to his party that he’s going to overhaul that machinery so the kind of nonsense that has happened and the bad stuff that has happened over the last weeks and months will never happen again.’
Earlier in the month he also laid into the ‘unforgivable’ 16 or so parties that took place in No 10 and Whitehall when 66million Britons were banned from meeting anyone, or limited to seeing one other person but threatened with fines if they sat on a bench.
Mr Harri had said Mr Johnson needed to get on with a ‘really grovelling apology’ and predicted more parties would emerge – and he was right.
He told BBC 2’s Newsnight: ‘I think we can safely assume that there were many more gatherings because it seems to be a pattern. Somebody needs to put them in context and explain, yes maybe they’re unforgivable, but they’re also understandable in some ways’.
His heavy criticism of the Johnson administration continues in November 2020, just after Dominic Cummings left No 10.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper that Mr Johnson has written for for years before entering Downing Street, had ‘been relentlessly causing offence’ and that he had seen ‘his broad church narrowed to a sect’.
He added that ‘the communications strategy during this Covid crisis has been a masterclass in incompetence’.
Mr Harri, a proud Welshman who voted for Remain has been critical of his boss’ stance on Brexit.
When the now PM was manoeuvring to replace Theresa May as party leader, quitting as foreign secretary in July 2018, Mr Harri argued that Brexit had ‘destroyed’ him, insisting ‘because nobody genuinely believes that he was sincere about it.’
Months later he launched his most blistering attack. He was angry that Johnson accused Theresa May of agreeing a Brexit deal that was wrapping ‘a suicide vest around the British constitution’.
Mr Harri told the BBC: ‘Unfortunately, he is now dragging us into a place where we think that we can joke about suicide vests and that we can be sexually incontinent.
‘He was a huge unifying figure when the Olympics happened in London. He would not have been reelected in a left-leaning city if he hadn’t appealed to the left. Now he’s gone the other way. He’s become more tribal’, adding that if he became PM he would become ‘a hugely divisive figure.’
Guto Harri left GB News after he was publicly reprimanded by the channel’s ‘anti-woke’ bosses for taking the knee live on television in protest at the racist abuse aimed at black England football stars
Then Mayor of London Boris Johnson arriving at the East London Mosque with his Director of Communication Guto Harri in 2009
Mr Harri was previously the BBC’s chief political correspondent and returned to broadcasting in 2018, working for Welsh free-to-air channel S4C.
PM’s spokesman Guto Harri lobbied for Huawei to try to fend off 5G network ban
Guto Harri (pictured today) lobbied the Government on behalf of toxic Chinese tech giant Huawei, it emerged last night.
Boris Johnson was forced to stop the firm building Britain’s 5G network amid fears the firm could pass secrets to President Xi’s administration in Beijing.
Mr Harri has worked for Hawthorn Advisers for the past two years – but resigned yesterday.
Sources told The Sun that ‘Mr Harri was directly involved in talks with senior officials trying to head off the landmark ban’.
A Downing Street insider said: ‘This is separate to his new role in No10. This Government is committed to removing Huawei from UK 5G networks by 2027.’
Last year he quit GB News following a row over him taking the knee on air during a debate about racism directed at England football players.
Mr Harri, 55, reportedly decided to leave the channel after he was suspended following a viewer backlash over his action.
Writing in the Sunday Times about his experience on GB News, the former broadcaster said: ‘I joined part-time but with an ongoing commitment, because I liked and trusted those in charge and supported the broad vision.
‘But the channel is rapidly becoming an absurd parody of what it proclaimed to be.
‘Rather than defending free speech and confronting cancel culture, it has set out to replicate it on the far right.’
Born in Cardiff, Mr Harri studied at the University of Oxford and later took a postgraduate course in journalism at Cardiff University.
Between working for Mr Johnson and for GB News, he became director of communications for News UK in 2012 following the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal.
In an alumni blog post on Cardiff University’s website, Mr Harri described the role as a ‘shock to the system’.
‘I’m very proud of the part that I played in allowing those people to be journalists again and not be seen as phone hackers and corrupters of public life,’ he wrote.
Mr Harri said in the same post he was ‘surprised, disappointed and arguably distraught’ about Mr Johnson’s leadership of the Leave campaign.
In the same year, Mr Harri also took aim at Mr Johnson over a series of controversial remarks which he said were doing ‘enormous damage’ to his former boss’s political prospects.
He accused Mr Johnson of ‘digging his political grave’ and warned he would be ‘hugely divisive’ as a Prime Minister.
At the time, Mr Johnson faced a Tory backlash over his claim that Theresa May’s Brexit strategy had put the UK in a ‘suicide vest’ and handed the detonator to Brussels.
Mr Harri added that Mr Johnson was ‘dragging us into a place where we think that we can joke about suicide vests and that we can be sexually incontinent’.
He told BBC Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster: ‘I fear that Boris is digging. Somebody needs to take the spade out of his hand or it looks to me like he’s digging his political grave.
‘It’s one thing to deploy humour and charm and intellect and all these things he has in spades which he has done brilliantly in the past, not least his exquisite gift of language.
‘But at the moment it is being deployed in a really destructive and self-destructive way that I think is doing enormous damage to him as well as to the country.
‘People always said he shot from the hip and used language loosely or gaffed. It was always very calculated.
‘It was just calculated in a very, very clever way in the past. Over a period of time, Boris did move from celebrity to statesman and did widen his appeal enormously.
‘He was a huge unifying figure by the end of my time with him when the Olympics happened in London.
‘There were people on left and right. He would not have been re-elected in a left leaning city like London if he hadn’t appealed to the left.
‘Now he’s gone the other way. He’s become more tribal, and tribal within the tribe, so that he would now be – if he were to become leader – a hugely divisive figure.
‘And that for somebody who is equipped to be a unifying figure, who’s equipped to create a feel-good factor, who’s equipped to take us all on whatever journey because he makes it fun, he makes it exciting and he is a true visionary.
‘Unfortunately he is now dragging us into a place where we think that we can joke about suicide vests and that we can be sexually incontinent.’
The PM wrote to all Tory MPs to promise them a greater say in the making of Government policy. He guaranteed them a ‘direct line into 10 Downing Street’, as he fights for his job
New chief of staff at No. 10 will have to juggle THREE jobs as he tries to strengthen ties with rest of Government
He has brought in Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Steve Barclay (pictured) as his chief of staff
The Prime Minister’s job-juggling chief of staff will help No 10 work more closely with the rest of Government, a Cabinet minister said yesterday.
Boris Johnson is attempting to reset his premiership by appointing two allies to senior roles in Downing Street.
He has brought in Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Steve Barclay as his chief of staff and journalist Guto Harri as his director of communications.
Questions have been asked about how much time Mr Barclay will be able to commit to the role while also serving as a Cabinet minister and an MP.
But Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said that the combined role would allow him to ‘align’ the Cabinet Office with No 10 so they ‘work more cohesively’.
He told Sky News it was a ‘great appointment’ and showed the PM was ‘recognising’ Sue Gray’s criticisms of leadership structures in her Partygate report.
Mr Kwarteng said in her interim report into lockdown-busting parties in Whitehall, senior civil servant Sue Gray had ‘said that there were leadership structures that were opaque’.
He continued: ‘It was very difficult to see where the accountability was and by appointing Steve, I think the Prime Minister is recognising that and is trying to combine the Number 10 operation with that of the Cabinet Office.
‘As you know, Steve is head of the Cabinet Office in his role as CDL, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.’
But a previous holder of the job last night warned that the decision to appoint a Cabinet minister as No 10 chief was a ‘recipe for chaos’.
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