‘Revealing I was groped by Daniel Korski in No 10 was tough – but I wasn’t the only woman he harassed’
Exclusive: I have spent the last week feeling a mixture of righteous anger and hideous self-doubt after revealing what happened to me during a meeting in Downing Street, but I had no choice but to speak out, writes Daisy Goodwin
Lawyers acting on behalf of Daniel Korski asked for their client’s response to these allegations to be included prominently in this article: “Mr Korski categorically denies any allegation of inappropriate behaviour towards Ms Goodwin or any other individual.”
Ten years ago a man who worked for David Cameron as a special adviser asked me for a meeting in Downing Street and as the meeting ended he deliberately touched my breast.
In 2017 I wrote a piece describing this event without naming the man. It was clear from the messages I received at the time from people close to No 10 that everyone knew who he was. He was named by the Guido Fawkes website, and although he denied it, I felt that the flag had been raised.
So, I was surprised when I heard that the man – Daniel Korski – was standing to be the Tory candidate for mayor. Surely, I reasoned, the Conservative party, or indeed any party would be extra vigilant about vetting their candidates given the recent slew of sex-related scandals, but apparently not.
It was suggested to me by a friend whose moral compass I trust absolutely that I should name the man. Yet I hesitated: other friends were dubious about what I would achieve and worried about the effect on me.
There was also some scepticism. One female friend narrowed her eyes and said, “Are you quite sure that he meant to touch you on the breast?” She is a very close friend, so I know that her reason for asking was well-intentioned, she didn’t want me to go nuclear about an accidental boob brush.
However, as I said to her, there is a world of difference between a man accidentally touching a breast and a grope. When it’s an accident the man is embarrassed and apologises instantly. That is not what happened in my case. When I asked him why he had his hand on my breast, he didn’t apologise, he denied it, and has continued to do so.
But still it wasn’t an easy decision to name him. I was conscious that I should have done something at the time, but I am of a generation of women who wanted to make their reputations on their own deeds, not on what was done to them. If that meant rising above what we would now call sexual harassment, then that was the price we had to pay.
But that is not a price that I want my daughters to pay. As one very distinguished female peer wrote to me, “Well done for outing that creep, but also well done for saying that while some of us, people like you, people like me, have usually taken this on the chin and have done too often, it doesn’t mean that we should stay silent. Time for everyone to speak up. “
Since I first named Korski in a newspaper article, I have been contacted by several other women who have described misconduct by him. Some of them said he touched them in an inappropriate way in a public place. Others found his general behaviour unsettling or even misogynistic.
The accounts these women have given me make me feel even more confident that I was right to speak out. They said that they knew there was something wrong with the encounter, and they all described it to their friends about it afterwards as being weird or disturbing. They have all one thing in common, all of them were either employed by the government, or they were working in the tech industry – which in my experience meant they were unlikely to complain.
The civil service has an HR department, of course it does, but the women I have spoken to are afraid that speaking out will label them as troublemakers and could hurt their career prospects. One woman who did make a complaint was dismayed to find that no action was taken, although she was directed towards an in-house counselling service.
The tech women are equally worried about making a complaint because tech is a “bro culture” and women are the exception not the rule, and just as I did when I was working in the BBC in the 1980s and 1990s, they feel they should tough it out. Obviously, I have encouraged them all to go on the record, but I don’t blame them at all for being reluctant. If their HR departments give them the brush off, their only option is to go to the press, and despite confidentiality being guaranteed, that can be a scary prospect. It is some comfort at least to note that all mention of Korski has been removed from the website of Public, the digital services company he co-founded, suggesting they at least are taking the claims seriously.
I know that there are many people out there who feel that my article, and Korski’s subsequent withdrawal from the Tory race for mayor for London, is trial by media and that a promising politician has had his career ruined on account of an unsubstantiated allegation. But I say to them that my purpose in writing the piece was to see if there are any other women out there who had had bad experiences with him.
I will quote (with her permission) the response of one: “Please know that the young women in Westminster who have encountered him (of which I am one of many) believe you entirely and unquestioningly.”
Another woman who noted the fact that Korski had made a veiled threat about taking separate legal advice, told me that if he sued for libel she would testify on my behalf about his behaviour towards her.
I think the real question now is not whether justice has been done, but why did it take so long? From what I can gather Korski’s behaviour towards women was not exactly a state secret. One female MP told me that “Everybody in Westminster knew that Dan Korski was a perv”. It was reported by a former civil servant that women working in No 10 were warned not to have meetings alone with him. I heard that one senior Conservative politician who worked with Korski said, “We all knew that Dan was handsy, but he was just so clever”.
‘Handsy’ is such an interesting choice of word, one that men use about each other – it makes the behaviour sound harmless – the physical equivalent of banter. But if you replace ‘handsy’ with ‘harasser’ it feels very different.
I am sure Korski is clever, but that doesn’t mean he is wise. I think that wisdom must involve some measure of impulse control, and a man who makes unwanted sexual advances when contemplating a political career is not someone who can keep themselves in check.
I am not saying that all politicians should be judged on the way they conduct themselves in private. The days of the Tory wife standing by her man at the garden gate are thankfully over, but I do think they should be judged by how they behave in the workplace. Nobody should have tomatoes thrown at them or have their thigh grabbed just because they work for someone.
When the prime minister’s spokesman was asked about the allegations, he said that the PM urged women to come forward, but I say in reply who are they meant to come forward to? As I discovered when I tried to make my formal complaint, no one wants to take responsibility. Conservative headquarters said it was a matter for the employer, and the Cabinet Office who employed Korski at the time said that it was a matter for the Met, and that they could do nothing because Korski no longer worked for No.10.
I have no motive for coming forward except the fact that I live in London, and I felt that London voters deserved to know what I knew about Korski. Clearly, Conservative Central Office did not share my view, even though Korski himself claims he told them about my allegation when the original story was published in 2017.
If they had done even the smallest amount of investigation, they might have saved themselves the embarrassment of the past week. But they chose not to do that, or possibly they thought that because I hadn’t named Korski in the past I would be reluctant to do so now. In other words, they had already priced in Korski’s behaviour. And they might have been right.
It would have been much easier for me not to speak out. I have spent the last week feeling a mixture of righteous anger and hideous self-doubt. Every time I thought about the relative inconsequence of what happened to me and the life-changing implications of my speaking out for him, I felt a spasm of self-reproach.
When I heard he had withdrawn from the mayoral race about 36 hours after my article was published I felt relieved but also some guilt about the strain it must have put on his family. But as one of my daughters put it, “Oh mum, don’t be such a girl. Think of how guilty you would have felt if he had been elected Mayor of London and you had done nothing.”
That is definitely true. The idea that Korski is in charge of keeping London safe for women feels quite preposterous.
My overwhelming emotion now is relief that it is all over, and gratitude to all the people male and female who have got in touch with me to express their support. Doing the right thing should be its own reward, but it makes a real difference to know that other people are watching and cheering you on.
I don’t spend a lot of time on social media, and I kept away from it deliberately when my piece went out but my family and friends kept an eye out for it, and they said that the response was 98 per cent positive, which is hugely encouraging for other women who want to speak out.
I hope that Whitehall and Westminster get their act together so that it is possible for women and men to report such actions with impunity and – most importantly – that something is done.