Under the vaulted blue roof of the old Westminster chapel, a short walk from Downing Street, Carrie Johnson strode confidently to the lectern. Behind the former prime minister’s wife sat a cross-party panel of senior politicians. Below her hovered a crowd stuffed with journalists and politicians, and beyond them a table laid with 123 neatly spaced yellow roses – one for every woman killed by a man the previous year. They were the favourite flowers of Joanna Simpson, a mother of two bludgeoned to death by her estranged husband, who is due to be freed from jail shortly. After meeting Joanna’s mother at a Buckingham Palace reception, Carrie had offered to help her mount a campaign to keep him behind bars.
Watching her deliver on that promise on that night in early March, it wasn’t hard to see Carrie Johnson reinventing herself successfully beyond Downing Street, perhaps as an unusually well-networked PR for the kind of causes that cross political divides. But it’s harder to say what will become of the man hovering at the back of the hall that night, desperate for once in his life not to be the centre of attention.
