Andrew Bolt: Carrie Symonds seems to be most ruthless power behind Boris Johnson

Carrie Symonds is wielding huge political influence all because she is sleeping with Britain’s Prime Minister.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson with his partner Carrie Symonds. Picture: AFP

Britain has a woman problem. A problem with young, inexperienced and unaccountable women wielding huge political influence just because they slept with a man at the top.

Meghan Markle is the most obvious. But Carrie Symonds is the most powerful.

Markle is the American actor who snared Prince Harry, and within two years of their wedding had him drop his royal duties, flee Britain and set up a rival court in California, subsidised by Netflix.

All that before she turned 39.

Symonds is just 32 but unlike Markle, has her hands on real state power, despite not being elected, appointed or even married into any position.

She slept with Boris Johnson when he was already married with four children, and now that he’s Prime Minister is his fiance and mother of his youngest child.

Meghan and Prince Harry. Picture: AFP

She is also, it seems, the greatest and most ruthless power behind his throne.

“The most powerful PM partner in history?” asked the Daily Mail. No, just “Princess Nut Nuts”, sniped her critics in Downing St.

Both charges may be right.

Two weeks ago Symonds reportedly engineered the dumping of Johnson’s key advisor, Dominic Cummings, who’d masterminded Johnson’s brilliantly successful Brexit campaign but was now damned by Symonds as too “macho”.

She also had Cummings’ ally Lee Cain ousted as director of communications after Johnson confronted the two with text messages showing they’d briefed against Symonds.

Then Johnson, supposedly a Conservative, announced a bizarre green deal that would ban new petrol cars by 2030.

That’s exactly the kind of scheme to appeal to Symonds, who works at Oceana, an ocean conservation charity, and tweets a storm about the alleged climate crisis: “We all must come together for our planet … Action cannot wait.”

Symonds is also a health crusader and is also now blamed by Conservative MPs for Johnson’s nanny-state plan to ban online junk food adverts.

Her use of power is so blatant that it was cited by furious farmers in a court case this year against the Johnson government.

Mr Johnson (R) and Ms Symonds (L). Picture: AFP

Badgers are culled in Europe to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis to cattle, but the National Farmers’ Union claimed a cull in Derbyshire was stopped because Johnson took a “personal interest”, after the Badger Trust’s boss briefed Symonds.

Of course, every politician’s partner has some influence. Prime Minister John Howard famously consulted wife Janette.

But few partners wield their power so obviously, and so dramatically against the wishes of the Prime Minister’s own team.

“Part of the problem is that everyone comes to an agreement, then he … talks to Carrie, he talks to her friends, and his position moves,” one source complained to The Times.

But with Symonds’ influence, there is one extra hazard. She is so young. Almost no one who is 32 could be elected into a position with the political clout Symonds now has – and uses.

No Australian has been Prime Minister at her age, and only one Britain made it – William Pitt the Younger, and only because King George III put him there more than 200 years ago.

In fact, only a woman is likely to have her kind of influence at just 32.

No male partner of a British or Australian Prime Minister has been Symonds’ age. Only a female partner is likely to be that young – and so inexperienced for the kind of role the Symonds has seized.

True, she has some political background. Johnson met her when she was head of communications in the Conservative Party.

But that was no big success. She had to quit just months after she was accused of abusing her expenses, and after party bosses said she was bad at her job.

Of course, that should not surprise. We can’t expect much from someone barely 30 and with so much still to learn.

But Symonds still seems totally lacking in self-doubt, and who in the Conservative Party now dares to say she’s out of her depth- or tweet that she’s a bit of a Princess Nut Nuts?

She may not have power of her own to punish them, but she sleeps with someone who does – and has now used it.

Is this really a model for feminist power? Should Cosmopolitan be gushing how this “former PR worker is set to become a very influential female figure in British life”?

Symonds is not elected, not appointed, can’t be sacked and is not even that smart.

Her only qualification is that she now shares the Prime Minister’s bed. Didn’t women fight for power based on something more?