Talk about making an entrance. No more than 24 hours into his job as No 10’s new comms chief and Guto Harri was already rivalling his new boss with tongue-in-cheek quips.
In his short tenure as the PM’s latest spin doctor, the extroverted Welshman has already described Boris Johnson as “not a total clown”, revealed that Johnson welcomed him into the job with a rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, and announced with a cheeky grin that he was carrying “bottles of mineral water” into Downing Street for staff - a nod to the recent partygate allegations.
It was certainly a bold first day for an adviser to a prime minister currently facing his lowest satisfaction ratings since he took the job. According to a Downing Street source, Harri has since been reprimanded by the PM for the “disastrous” interview and “will not be talking on the record again”.
But Cardiff-born father-of-three Harri, 54, is hardly a stranger to a good bit of controversy. The former BBC broadcaster-turned-PR professional was recently accused of lobbying on behalf of tech giant Huawei and was suspended from his presenting job on GB News for taking the knee live on air last year.
Those who know him have described Harri as an “amusing, passionate and outspoken” Remainer who has been critical of Johnson’s leadership and Leave tactics in the past but whose sense of humour is “very much aligned” to that of his new and former boss (Harri previously worked as Johnson’s comms chief in his first term as mayor of London).
According to insiders, Harri has a habit of becoming the story and is “certainly in danger” of being to Downing Street what Donald Trump’s former comms director Anthony Scaramucci was to the White House. Scaramucci lasted an eventful ten days before famously being booted out of Washington following a car-crash interview with The New Yorker in which he accused his colleague Steve Bannon of “sucking his own c”ck”. Does Harri risk tempting a similar fate?
From his proud Welsh roots to his (surprising) morning routine, meet the man becoming Boris Johnson’s new mouthpiece in Westminster.
From Wales to Westminster
Born in Cardiff, Harri went on to study PPE at the University of Oxford and later returned to his home city to complete a postgraduate course in broadcast journalism at Cardiff University. His first job was as a presenter on a Welsh-language radio station before he went on to spend 18 years as a journalist for the BBC, first for BBC Wales and later in London, presenting shows including The World At One and Westminster Live. “He was part of a group of smart, very ambitious Welsh guys in London,” remembers political commentator Anne McElvoy, who first met Harri while working in Westminster in her twenties.
McElvoy says Harri’s social circle included Ffion Hague, the wife of now-Conservative Lord William Hague. “They were all smart state school people from a similar neck of the woods. They all hung out at the Welsh Club on Gray’s Inn Road and saw themselves as shaking up the town a bit. He was always funny, outspoken, sharp-elbowed... but in a nice way.”
Tri GUTO a Gweindog @gvcymru @GutoLlewelyn @DavidTCDavies yn San Steffan @ybydyneileS4C @S4C heno am 9.30pm pic.twitter.com/a5kBFvTN36
— Guto Harri (@Guto_Harri) January 28, 2020
Harri married his wife Shireen, an author and mindfulness teacher, in 2000 and became the BBC’s chief political correspondent in 2002, reportedly hiring a Welsh-speaking nanny for their then-two children while he worked in New York so they could maintain their native language (they have since had a third child). He left the BBC in 2017 to move into public relations, spending a year at top London PR agency Fleishman-Hillard before being appointed as communications director for then-mayor of London Boris Johnson in City Hall.
“He was very good at making people who don’t warm to Boris Johnson quite like Boris Johnson,” says an acquaintance. “There’s a sort of Guto version of Boris. He’s very much his master’s voice, but he has an independence and journalistic side to him too.
A decade later …. @GMB found this old photo of better times for @BorisJohnson pic.twitter.com/vEgqnA383P
— Guto Harri (@Guto_Harri) January 18, 2022
“He’s not just one of those guys who just comes out and reads lines to take for the lobby. That’s both an advantage to Guto but also a disadvantage because he tends to become the story.”
Headline-grabbing moments
Harri has certainly become the story a few times over his 30-year career. After his stint in City Hall, he spent three years as director of communications and corporate affairs at Rupert Murdoch’s News UK as it sought to recover from the phone-hacking scandal. But his most headline-grabbing moments have taken place more recently.
In May last year he joined GB News as a co-host of a weekly news and discussion programme, but he was later suspended following backlash to his taking of the knee in a show of support for the England football team’s anti-racism kneeling for Black Lives Matter. The network claimed that he had failed to maintain its editorial standards and he later resigned after writing in the Sunday Times that the channel was “becoming an absurd parody”.
Rhaglen ola’r gyfres @ybydyneileS4C ymhen awr @S4C pic.twitter.com/nfUJMcOuiH
— Guto Harri (@Guto_Harri) October 6, 2021
“Rather than defending free speech and confronting cancel culture, it has set out to replicate it on the far right,” he said of GB News after the experience.
This week more revelations were made about Harri’s CV: this time concerning his role at strategic communications consultancy Hawthorn Advisors. According to documents, Harri was involved in lobbying a former chief of Downing Street staff not to ban Chinese technology company Huawei over spying fears.
Wedi rhannu rhai syniadau gyda Jacob Morris @Golwg360 https://t.co/Rv7cF0iCYj
— Guto Harri (@Guto_Harri) January 13, 2022
A wellness-loving Remainer with a sense of humour
In many ways, Harri is an unlikely candidate for being a close friend and shiny new aide of the PM’s. He has been scathing of Johnson’s leadership over the years and is the first to admit that he holds “very different views” from the PM, particularly on Brexit.
He is a passionate Remainer - both publicly, and behind-closed-doors. “Last time I saw Guto and Shireen, his wife, it was at somebody’s party in the country and it was just after Brexit and Guto talked all weekend about the disaster of Brexit,” says a member of his dinner party set. “He became completely obsessed with this [Brexit] thing... When he gets on his hobby-horse about something, he doesn’t easily get off it.”
Dyma ni! Mond yr Urdd alle gael fi i wneud hyn! https://t.co/9ebH7Dd5U8 pic.twitter.com/8jtJHskF6i
— Guto Harri (@Guto_Harri) May 1, 2020
Harri is also said to be a keen meditator. His wife, Shireen, runs the West London Mindfulness Centre and describes herself on Twitter as a “meditator, traveller, believer, nourishing foodie, yogi”. She’s got her husband into it too. “The last time I saw Guto, he was basically trying to convince this burn-the-candle-at-both-ends crowds of party people that the way to a happy life was to meditate for 45 minutes every morning,” his friend continues.
“He’s a funny mixture that way: he’s into the whole holistic, wellbeing thing. That comment about taking the snacks in[to Downing Street] for the staff is probably a bit of a joke about the parties, but he also really means it.”
Unlike @BorisJohnson I didn’t get stuck on the zip wire, but a reminder of obstacles ahead for Brexit. @RhunapIorwerth and Mel Owen debate @ybydyneileS4C and @MarkReckless on abolishing the Senedd https://t.co/zew6y76aYB pic.twitter.com/AicgVmRRzp
— Guto Harri (@Guto_Harri) December 10, 2020
Johnson might not knowingly share Harri’s penchant for wellness or breathing exercises, but what he and the Welshman do have in common is their humour. “[Harri] is very, very amusing,” his friend adds. “He will have to be quite careful with his sense of humour [in the new job], but it is very aligned with the way Boris Johnson sees the world: that life is about a mix of light and shade.”
She adds that both men are extroverts and rely on personality. “I think they will be very good together. [Harri] needs to break Boris out of that slightly dreary dependency on not doing very much press. What Guto really believes in is Boris’ force of personality - he will try to bring that to the fore.”
Downing Street’s Scaramucci?
Harri’s new role as director of communications was announced on Monday, replacing former Daily Mail journalist Jack Doyle amid Johnson’s bid to shake-up No 10.
Hours after his appointment, Harri told little-known Welsh language website Golwg360 that the Prime Minister offered to take the knee for him (a nod to the reason for his exit from GB News) and serenaded him with Gloria Gaynor’s disco hit I Will Survive. “I walked in and I made a salute and said ‘Prime Minister, Guto Harri reporting for duty’ and he stood up from back to his desk and started taking the salute but then he said ‘What am I doing, I should take the knee for you’,” Harri told the Welsh site.
“We can safely assume there were many more gatherings like this, because it seems to be a pattern.”
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) January 11, 2022
Boris Johnson’s former adviser @Guto_Harri says “the problem at the moment is nobody seems to be getting a grip.”
#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/zzCeU3dmQy
“And we were both laughing. Then I asked ‘Are you going to survive Boris?‘ And he said it in his deep voice, slowly and purposefully and started singing a little while finishing the sentence and saying ‘I Will Survive’. Inevitably he invited me to say ‘You’ve got all your life to live’ and he replied, ‘I’ve got all my love to give’, so we had a little blast of Gloria Gaynor!”
The interview also saw Harri claiming his new boss was “not all that clownish” - far from the first time he has made less-than-positive noises about his new (and former) boss. The Welshman has been critical of Johnson’s leadership many times over the years since they first worked together, suggesting in 2018 that he would be a “hugely divisive” prime minister who was “digging his political grave”, and that he was “surprised, disappointed and arguably distraught” about Johnson’s leadership of the Leave campaign.
More recently, Harri called Downing Street’s communications strategy through the Covid crisis “a masterclass in incompetence” and branded the No 10 partygate scandal “unforgiveable” that would require a “really grovelling apology” from the Prime Minister. So why did Johnson pick Harri as his spin doctor at a time when he’s already fighting for his political life?
First, he’s a familiar face for Johnson at a “toxic” time of great upheaval in Downing Street, commentators have noted. The pair clearly have a good working relationship from their time at City Hall and despite some scathing remarks, Harri has had Johnson’s back many times over the years, too. He recently denied that Johnson was a “party animal”, claiming on LBC last month that the public was losing its “sense of perspective” about allegation that Johnson was given a birthday cake at a party with colleagues in June 2020. “Are we really so prissy, a piece of cake being brought into a meeting is considered sickening?” he said.
A good day https://t.co/QIpFdBdvru
— Guto Harri (@Guto_Harri) February 27, 2020
This ability to be both critical and sympathetic towards Johnson puts Harri in a strong position, says political commentator Peter Cardwell, who worked for four Cabinet Ministers in the May and Johnson administration and is the author of The Secret Life of Special Advisers. “He’s is a proper grown-up who can do what senior Spads are meant to do: be brutally honest and tell the Prime Minister when he is wrong, and why.”
Cardwell has known Harri for almost a decade and insists “the length and quality” of Harri’s relationship with the PM will serve him well in the new role. Will his cheeky quips get him in trouble? Cardwell admits Harri has “a great sense of humour” like his boss but insists he has “no doubt his seriousness of purpose will take over as partygate fades from the media focus.”
Other commentators aren’t so sure. Andrew MacDougall, former director of communications for Canadian prime minister, has suggested that Harri should be wary of fronting the news cycle himself. “Will Harri make it past one Scaramucci (ten days)? Three Scarameech (a month)?” he asks. “As every good spad knows, or should know, you never want to be the story.”
So will Scara-history repeat itself or will Harri treat a slightly more careful path? If his first few days in the job is anything to go by, Downing Street could certainly be in for an interesting week.
