Carrie Johnson

Early life and education Caroline Louise Beavan Symonds was born on 17 March 1988 to Matthew Symonds, co-founder of The Independent, and Josephine McAfee (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.

Symonds was born following an affair between her parents; both were married to other people at the time. She worked at Conservative Campaign Headquarters, and later campaigned for Boris Johnson in the 2010 London Conservative Party mayoral selection. Symonds was present when Whittingdale and others launched Conservative Friends of Russia (later called the Westminster Russia Forum and disbanded in March 2022) and has attended several of its meetings.

Symonds became the Conservative Party's head of communications in 2018, but left the position later that year, taking up a job in public relations for the Oceana project. These accusations were claimed by an anonymous "longtime colleague" to be a smear campaign allegedly spread by Symonds's political strategist, Lynton Crosby (subsequently denied by Crosby).

In January 2021, Symonds was recruited to a senior communications role at the Aspinall Foundation, a wildlife charity. At the time, she was reported to be receiving a "high five-figure salary." In August 2025, the foundation declined to confirm whether she was still employed there.

She is a patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation.

John Worboys case 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. Worboys offered her champagne, which she surreptitiously did not drink. Worboys stopped the cab and insisted she drink some vodka;

Symonds was the youngest of Worboys's victims, and waived her anonymity to talk about her experiences and, later, to campaign against his early release, fundraising for a successful judicial review of the decision.

She began an affair with British politician Boris Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, in 2018 while he was married to his second wife, Marina Wheeler. In July 2019, Johnson became prime minister and both he and Symonds officially moved into the flat above 11 Downing Street. She was the first unmarried partner of a prime minister to reside at Downing Street. The following month, she was barred from entering the United States as her visa application was rejected due to a previous visit with her close friend Nimco Ali 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.

On 29 February 2020, Symonds and Boris Johnson announced that they had become engaged in late 2019 and were expecting their first child together in early summer. She is a Catholic and had her son baptised into the Catholic Church.

Symonds married Boris Johnson in secrecy on 29 May 2021 in a Catholic ceremony at Westminster Cathedral attended by thirty guests. In July 2021, she announced that they were expecting their second child together, also revealing that she had suffered a miscarriage earlier that year. Their daughter, Romy Iris Charlotte Johnson, was born on 9 December 2021 in London. Their third child, a son named Frank Alfred Odysseus Johnson, was born on 5 July 2023, at UCLH. Their fourth child, a daughter named Poppy Eliza Josephine, was born on 21 May 2025. In the 2023 Channel 4 docudrama Partygate, she was played by Rebecca Humphries.

Political influence Johnson greeting U.S. First Lady Jill Biden at the 47th G7 summit in Cornwall, June 2021 Concerns over her influence on the prime minister were raised in January 2020, when it came to light that she had received briefs from animal rights activists just before the government pulled a planned cull of badgers in Derbyshire. An association representing farmers, the NFU, asserted that this meeting and her influence played a key role in the government ignoring scientific advice in favour of retaining the cull.

According to The Guardian, a judicial review was granted permission to examine how the decision was reached. and urged Boris Johnson to fire environment secretary George Eustice from his role. She was additionally involved in a political controversy over the refurbishment of the 11 Downing Street flat,

Carrie and Boris Johnson departing 10 Downing StreetDuring Dominic Cummings's tenure as chief adviser, Cummings and Carrie Symonds were said to represent two separate factions influencing the prime minister. Cummings also said that the prime minister "cancel[led] an inquiry about a leak ... because it might implicate his girlfriend's friends"; Cummings accused Henry Newman, the senior adviser in Downing Street and ally of Carrie Symonds, of being a "chatty rat" who leaked plans for a second lockdown in October. Cummings later said in 2021 that Symonds acted "illegally" in awarding influential jobs to her friends, including press secretary Allegra Stratton.

Conservative MP Caroline Nokes asserted that Carrie Johnson's influence has been exaggerated for sexist purposes; Writing in The Sunday Times, Marie Le Conte disagreed that such criticism is sexist. Journalist Sarah Vine, on the other hand, said that while it is easy to "blame the woman", the truth is "far more complicated", adding that Johnson's head did not deserve "to be on the block".

In February 2022, Carrie Johnson's spokeswoman denied that Johnson has influence over her husband amidst allegations from Tory peer Lord Ashcroft, who had written an unauthorised biography of her. Labour leader Keir Starmer said in relation to the book, "I approach politics on the basis that we should treat people with respect... Obviously, respect differences of opinion, but I do not go along with the idea that we should drag everybody into the gutter."

In June 2022, an article by Simon Walters appeared in The Times alleging that Boris Johnson recommended Carrie, who was then his mistress, as a candidate for a £100,000 per annum job as Chief-of-Staff in the Foreign Office while Johnson was Foreign Secretary. This story was removed from the paper after No. 10 intervened, although Walters says that he stands by the story.