What next for Allegra Stratton?

Looks like the wrong head rolled, at least for now. Allegra Stratton’s tearful media statement was as genuine and heartfelt as can be, in stark contrast to so many of Boris Johnson’s performances. The prime minister has the unfortunate knack of sounding phoney even when he is genuinely upset. Stratton’s remorse about “partygate” is obviously deep. It is sad, but also unfair, as she was not the biggest hypocrite in the room, or building. At least according to her training video, she actually went home on the evening in question, and thus cannot have broken the rules, leastways that time. She was the unwitting “star” of the training video, with her colleagues smiling, smirking and nervously laughing their way through a mock press conference, their guilt and acute embarrassment forcing its way through the jollity. And yes, Allegra, it was recorded and someone, presumably not a well-wisher, leaked it to ITV News, a former employer of hers. After that, it was only a matter of time. The backbench 1922 Committee presumably wanted a sacrifice, and she was the most high profile and most dispensable.

As many a spin doctor before her has discovered, when you become the story, in the words of Alastair Campbell, then your usefulness is exhausted. And so she went, just like Campbell, Andy Coulson, Damian McBride and others before her, who also found themselves too much the focus of media attention (albeit in varying ways).

Stratton’s problem, ironically, was that she wasn’t a very good liar. Though the jocular air of the practice briefing in the specially built £2.5m Downing Street studio was in poor taste, she wasn’t mocking bereaved members of the public. Rather, she was laughing, gallows-humour style, at the dismal absurdity of the situation. She merely betrayed the fact that she knew she was trying to defend the indefensible, and didn’t know how to do so without a blatant lie. Hence the release of nervous tension. She was laughing at her predicament, and that of her colleagues in the room who knew that they’d done wrong, morally and possibly legally. It was self-conscious, guilty, even fearful. It wasn’t malicious.

Shoehorning Stratton into No 10 effectively to replace Lee Cain, an associate of Dominic Cummings, was part of a power struggle between the radical forces around Cummings. Softer, more traditional types around Carrie Johnson and Rishi Sunak didn’t like Cummings or his ideas. Stratton was supposed to be part of a strategy to shift Downing Street out of the control of the laddish, aggressive gang left over from the Brexit Vote Leave campaign. Stratton seemed part of the antidote, and I can see why. Many years ago, I can recall Stratton working at The Independent, and she seemed a breezy, intelligent, warm personality with progressive inclinations. Not an obvious Tory. Since then, she married a senior hack on The Spectator, made impressive progress as a broadcaster, and maybe she somehow convinced herself that Johnson was some sort of green liberal, which, funnily enough is what so many of his internal critics dislike about him.

It was a wrong turning. Immediately before, Stratton had served, in fact very successfully, as director of communications at the Treasury under the image-conscious Sunak. Obviously, the relatively calm and disciplined atmosphere at the Treasury was poor preparation for No 10 and what engulfed her working for Johnson. She never in the end took on the intended role as public voice of the prime minister, which, on the basis of her leaked tape, is probably just as well. Something somewhere went wrong, perhaps her inability to tell bare-faced semi-truths and peddle illogicalities, and she was shuffled off to help with Cop26 instead. The constitutional innovation of a public spokesperson for the premier, on the American presidential model, was never in the end attempted. She was no Sean Spicer. (Though it’s only fair to add that Sean Spicer turned out to be no Sean Spicer either.)

It’s not great for the Stratton CV. Nor, frankly, were a number of other gaffes during her time in Downing Street and as official spokesperson for the president of the Cop26 conference, Alok Sharma. She attracted ridicule for saying that people could do many things if they want to save the planet such as voting for the, erm, Green Party. She also gave off the wrong, trivial, vibes in the face of the existential climate emergency by suggesting “micro-steps”, eg that folk needn’t bother rinsing dishes before they go in the dishwasher, put bread in the freezer, buy shower gel in cardboard packaging, and walk rather than drive to the shops. On the other hand, she didn’t see any reason why families should give up flying; and nor was she was going to give up her trusty old diesel VW Golf rather than buy an electric alternative (despite her £125,000 a year plus salary).

Perhaps Stratton supposed that a career in politics or public relations might follow on from her spell as the human face of Johnsonite nationalist populism. A return to conventional journalism is another option, though she is a little compromised; maybe she could be one of that new breed of opinionated broadcasters, where the whole point is that you’re a walking, talking PR disaster. Her sorrowful farewell may assist a swift rehabilitation – particularly if she levels with the public and puts her own side of the story (because no one else is going to). There are plenty of executive climate/environmental jobs that would suit Stratton’s undoubted talents. She’d need a good spin doctor, though.