Carrie Symonds

Concerns over the influence of Symonds on the prime minister were raised in January 2020, when it came to light that Symonds received briefs from animal rights activists just before government came to pull a planned cull on badgers in Derbyshire. An association representing farmers, the NFU, believes this meeting and Symonds’ influence played a key role in the government ignoring scientific advice in favour of retaining the cull. According to The Guardian, a judicial review has been granted permission to examine how the decision was reached.

Symonds reportedly began a relationship with British politician Boris Johnson in 2018. As of May 2020, he is in the process of divorcing his second wife, Marina Wheeler. On 29 February 2020, Symonds and Johnson announced that they became engaged in late 2019 and were expecting a baby in mid-2020. Their son was born on 29 April 2020 at University College Hospital in London; they named him Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson.

On 4 April 2020, Symonds announced on Twitter that she was in recovery after experiencing symptoms of coronavirus and spending a week in bed. She was not tested for the disease.

In July 2019, Boris Johnson became prime minister and both he and Symonds officially moved into 10 Downing Street. The following month, she was barred from entering the United States as her visa application was rejected due to a previous visit to Somaliland, which the US considers to be part of immigration-restricted Somalia. On 16 August 2019, she made her first public appearance since entering 10 Downing Street, when she addressed what she called the "gigantic" climate crisis.

Symonds became the Conservative Party's head of communications in 2018, but left that position later that year and took up a job in public relations for the Oceana project.

In 2009, Symonds joined the Conservative Party as a press officer. She worked at Conservative Campaign Headquarters, and later campaigned for Boris Johnson in the 2010 London Conservative Party mayoral selection. She has also worked for Conservative MPs Sajid Javid (as a media special adviser) and John Whittingdale.

In 2007, aged 19, Symonds was driven home from a King's Road nightclub by taxi-driver John Worboys, who in 2009 was convicted of multiple sexual assaults on his passengers. She later recalled Worboys offering her champagne and vodka, which she believed was spiked and, after returning home, "vomiting and laughing hysterically before passing out until 3pm the next day".

Symonds grew up in South West London, and between 1999 and 2006 attended Godolphin and Latymer School, an independent day school for girls. She went on to the University of Warwick, where she studied art history and theatre studies and completed her degree in 2009.

Carrie Symonds (born 17 March 1988) is the fiancée of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson. She is the first unmarried partner of a Prime Minister to reside in 10 Downing Street. Symonds first became prominent when her affair with Johnson became public. She is a political activist who works as a senior advisor to ocean conservation charity Oceana.

Symonds was born on 17 March 1988 to Matthew Symonds, co-founder of The Independent, and Josephine Mcaffee (née Lawrence), a lawyer working for that newspaper. Her paternal grandfather was John Beavan, Baron Ardwick (at one time editor of the Daily Herald and later, during the 1970s, a Labour Party MEP), and her paternal grandmother was Anne Symonds, a BBC World Service journalist.