Boris Johnson’s former Foreign Office press secretary Simon McGee will be appointed a top spinner for Liz Truss if she makes it to Downing Street next week, according to sources.
The Guardian understands that the powerful job of No 10 director of communications will be split in two, with McGee taking on a civil service role and Truss’s existing senior media adviser, Adam Jones, running the political side of the operation.
McGee, a former civil servant who worked for Johnson until March 2018, has been lined up for a role similar to that conducted by a previous No 10 director of communications, James Slack, if as expected Truss wins the Tory leadership contest.
It would mean that, unlike many of his predecessors, he would take a back seat on political decisions – instead focusing on coordinating communications across Whitehall departments. This could help address concerns the government needs to rebuild bridges with the civil service after a bruising few years.
Jones, one of Truss’s Foreign Office political aides who has run strategic communications during her leadership campaign, would handle the cut and thrust of domestic politics as the new prime minister grapples with the worst economic crisis since the global financial crash.
McGee spent several years as a spinner for four Conservative cabinet ministers, including Justine Greening, Patrick McLoughlin, Philip Hammond and Johnson, heading up the diplomatic service’s worldwide media operation before joining the public affairs firm APCO. Before entering Whitehall he was a journalist for the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Times and the Yorkshire Post.
He is well respected in Tory circles where he is felt to have sufficient gravitas and expertise for a senior role in Downing Street, though with much of his experience in global affairs some believe he lacks the domestic economic background that his new boss needs to navigate the cost of living crisis.
One Tory source said: “Truss lacks Boris’s emotional connectivity and gut instinct when she’s speaking to the wider public, she’s driven more by logic, so she needs somebody who can help her bridge that gap. Simon and Adam will have their work cut out.
“Sounding like she has a tin ear right now as the cost of living really starts to bite wouldn’t just be a problem for the government, it could be catastrophic. She might just get through if she has sound policies, shows some empathy and is very lucky.”
McGee and Jones would take over the role from the former BBC journalist Guto Harri, who joined No 10 in February and oversaw Johnson’s media response to the Partygate and Chris Pincher scandals, as well as his reaction to the war in Ukraine. Jointly, they would become the fifth Downing Street director of communications in less than three years.
The Truss campaign declined to comment.
