With a resolutely male inner circle and the sacking of four female aides, it’s no surprise that accusations of misogyny have been levelled by the opposition. The question is whether it makes a difference at the ballot box
Sonia Khan seemed exactly the kind of young woman likely to prosper under Boris Johnson. A passionate Brexiter who cut her political teeth campaigning for lower taxes, at 27 she was already a veteran of several Whitehall departments, including the Treasury. When he became chancellor, Sajid Javid snapped her up. Then, last week, her career ended in the most brutal of ways; escorted out of No 10 by the police, after being summarily sacked by prime ministerial adviser Dominic Cummings in a manner that her former boss Philip Hammond suggested could win her an employment tribunal case should she choose to bring one.
Worse still, Khan, whose loyalties were seemingly questioned because of her contacts with old friends in the rebellious Hammond’s camp, was the fourth female aide forced out by the new regime. “How someone could think that escorting a young Asian woman out with an armed police officer was good optics beggars belief,” says a female former Tory staffer. She points out that the idea of what one anonymous Tory source called “big thuggy bald blokes picking on girls” is a gift to opposition MPs busy painting Johnson’s wider regime as aggressive, unreconstructed and full of dubious attitudes to women.
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