Boris Johnson ‘not a total clown’ admits new comms chief Guto Harri

Tories furious after Guto Harri tells radio station PM welcomed him to No 10 with a rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.

Boris Johnson’s new communications chief has already put his foot in it. Picture: Getty Images.

Boris Johnson’s new communications chief has insisted that the prime minister is “not a total clown” but revealed that Johnson welcomed him to the job at No 10 with a rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.

In his first interview since taking over as Downing Street director of communications, Guto Harri told a Welsh-language website that the prime minister acknowledged the “awful hurt” of the Downing Street party allegations and questions about his leadership.

He was quickly embroiled in a public row with Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former chief adviser, who insisted that Harri was himself a clown and “a case study in how not to do government communications”.

Guto Harri, the prime minister's new director of communications, arrives in Downing Street. Picture: AFP.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, insisted that he did not think Johnson was “sexually incontinent” – an insult previously levelled at the prime minister by Harri. Javid told Times Radio that he had “heard lots and lots of good things” about Harri, saying there was every reason to think that he would turn out to be an excellent communications head.

However, eyebrows have already been raised at Harri’s interview with Golwg360, a Welsh-language news website, in which he said that when he met the prime minister in Downing Street, Johnson joked that he ought to take the knee for Harri, who was dismissed by the GB News channel for making that gesture on air. Harri said: “The two of us were laughing. After I asked him: ‘Are you going to survive, Boris?’, and in his deep voice, slowly and purposefully, while singing slightly he finished his sentence by saying: ‘I will survive.’ In a way I could not resist, he invited me to say: ‘You’ve got all your life to live’, and he replied: ‘I’ve got all my love to give’, and so we had a little blast of Gloria Gaynor.”

Harri added: “Nobody expects that, but that’s the way it was. There was a lot of laughing and we sat down to have a serious chat about how to get the government back on track.

“Everyone’s attention is currently on recent events that have caused a great deal of hurt, but in the end, that’s nothing to do with the way people voted two years ago. He is not a total clown, but he is a very likeable character.”

Johnson now had to “persuade his party and the people on the ground that he is still the man who got a comfortable majority two years ago”, Harri said, adding that “by bringing in new people, and reorganising the system at No 10 and bringing in pragmatic, more experienced and perhaps less ideological professionals” they would help to get him and his cabinet focused.

At a meeting of Downing Street staff yesterday, Harri is said to have told officials that he had “learnt his lesson” after the interview. Harri, a former BBC reporter, was Johnson’s communications chief during his first term as mayor of London.

The Times has been told he was not Johnson’s first choice. Johnson’s allies are understood to have initially sounded out Will Walden, who succeeded Harri at City Hall in 2012, and one other senior figure in public relations.

The coverage of Harri’s interview angered Tory MPs who believed that he might bring greater professionalism to Downing Street. “This is a car crash before it has even started,” one said.

Another MP questioned whether it would “resonate with the commonsense group of [right-wing] MPs that the PM’s new head of comms takes the knee. He’ll last less than three months.”

Johnson’s spokesman did not deny that the two sang together. “They’re old colleagues,” he said.

A Labour spokesman said: “Britain faces spiralling bills, rising prices and Tory tax rises. But the PM’s new team have decided to kick off their ‘reset’ with yet more clown show nonsense.”

The Times