Boris Johnson: The team trying to shepherd the wayward Conservative frontrunner into No 10

Campaign manager James Wharton, press officer Lee Cain and girlfriend Carrie Symonds among candidate’s inner circle attempting to stage manage long amble to Downing Street

When Michael Gove launched his leadership campaign he said “in serious times we need a serious leader”. In an obvious reference to Boris Johnson, he said we need “someone who is prepared to go under the studio arc lights… not hide in their bunker”.

The tactic of hiding Johnson from media scrutiny has become obvious, with Westminster torn between admiration for the discipline shown by the team around the candidate in protecting his frontrunner status, and contempt for the cowardice of a potential prime minister refusing to face tough questions in public.

Certainly, his leadership campaign has shown a level of professionalism and organisation that was missing when he ran for the leadership three years ago, before he pulled out abruptly after Gove deserted him on the morning of his launch.

This time, Johnson’s campaign kicked off with a professional video of the candidate on the doorstep and in the street in Peterborough; continued with a steady stream of MPs coming out to declare their support; and will feature the candidate himself taking a few questions from the media, at last, at a formal launch event tomorrow.

We can expect this exposure to be kept to a minimum and tightly controlled. Since Theresa May announced her departure, Johnson has given one media interview, to Tim Shipman of The Sunday Times, in which the candidate committed himself to a total of 900 words in print. He has not ruled out a TV debate with other candidates, but frontrunners usually find ways of not doing them while pretending to be willing in principle.

So who are the people keeping Johnson on such a short leash, who have surprised journalists and fellow MPs with such a well-organised campaign?

James Wharton

Campaign manager

Wharton was a Conservative MP until he lost his northern seat in 2017. Now aged just 35, he became an MP at the age of 26 in 2010, and made a name for himself as a Eurosceptic. When he came top of the private member’s bill ballot in 2013, which gives a backbencher the chance to bring in a law they care about, he brought in a bill for a referendum on our membership of the EU. This irritated David Cameron, who had already promised a referendum after the next election, but the government was forced to support the bill – which was then defeated in the House of Lords.

I am told that Wharton should take the credit for the basic competence of the Johnson campaign this time round. It shouldn’t be overstated – one MP was reported to be gushing over “specifically designed work streams and spreadsheets” as if elementary computer skills were a Westminster innovation – but the campaign does seem to have run remarkably smoothly so far.

Wharton was also responsible for steering Johnson away from the shark pool of Portcullis House, the modern annexe to parliament where the candidate spent the months after leaving the cabinet last summer, buttonholing MPs and trying to build up his support. Recently, however, these visits became a chance for journalists to buttonhole Johnson instead, and Wharton ordered the candidate back to his office.

Lee Cain

Press officer

Cain worked for Vote Leave, the official campaign led by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove in the 2016 referendum. His long experience means that he is more than just a press officer – he is considered to be an important adviser on strategy to the candidate. His is a familiar face in the warren of media offices behind the press gallery in the House of Commons. He and Tim Smith, Jeremy Hunt’s special adviser, are the candidates’ spokespeople who most frequently tour the Burma Road – as the long, narrow corridor to newspaper offices is known.

Cain is a former Foreign Office special adviser, as is Ben Gascoigne, who worked with Johnson when he was foreign secretary, and who has now joined the campaign as an adviser on policy.

Carrie Symonds

Girlfriend

The daughter of Matthew Symonds, one of the three founders of The Independent, and Josephine Mcaffee, one of the newspaper’s lawyers, Carrie Symonds was head of broadcast at Conservative Campaign Headquarters, where she worked for eight years until last August. She left to run Bloomberg’s environmental campaign, Vibrant Oceans.

Her relationship with Johnson was first rumoured early last year and became public around the time he moved out of the family house he shared with Marina Wheeler, his second wife.

“Observers have noticed some positive lifestyle changes which they suspect may be the result of Carrie’s influence,” reported the Daily Mail, after Johnson appeared to have lost weight and gained a new hairstyle.

But Symonds’s influence extends well beyond the candidate’s personal image. She has a formidable campaigning record, not just on politics and green issues but in changing the law to prevent the release of John Worboys, the convicted rapist, who had attempted to assault her in his taxi when she was a 19-year-old student.

Sir Lynton Crosby

Campaign and polling adviser

Sir Lynton, the Sound of Music fan who ran Johnson’s campaigns for mayor of London in 2008 and 2012, also helped David Cameron win his surprise election victory in 2015.

His best-known saying is “throwing a dead cat on the table” – his way of describing a distraction that diverts journalists from discussing something unhelpful to his campaign. But on this occasion it seems Michael Gove, Johnson’s rival, has provided his own dead cat, with his past use of cocaine.

Crosby is no magician, having also run some losing campaigns, such as Michael Howard’s in 2005 and Theresa May’s in 2017 – although in that case he advised against calling an election and was not given the total control of the campaign that he sought.

He has no official role in Johnson’s leadership campaign, we are told, but he is experienced and trusted: the two of them speak on the phone every day.

Gavin Williamson

Unofficial chief whip

Williamson was one of the organisers of Theresa May’s leadership campaign in 2016. According to one of the MPs he canvassed then, he was good at suggesting that May was going to win and that if people wanted ministerial posts they should support her publicly, without ever saying so explicitly.

He seems to have been pursuing a similar “inevitability” tactic with the Johnson campaign. The candidate now has 70 MPs publicly backing him, twice as many as Jeremy Hunt or Michael Gove, with Dominic Raab, Johnson’s main rival for the hard-Brexit vote, stuck on 23 supporters.

As a former chief whip in May’s government, Williamson knows a lot about the importance of counting in politics, and a lot about the foibles, interests and soft spots of the 313 Conservative MPs who will select the two names from which party members will choose the next prime minister.

Williamson is supported by Conor Burns, the Thatcherite MP who has long been seen as Johnson’s lieutenant, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has kept an even lower profile than the candidate himself, but who has helped deliver the larger part of the European Research Group, the hard-Brexit caucus of Tory MPs.