Scarcely selective when it comes to whom she does business with – I’ve disclosed how she’s already involved in a joint venture with the rouble-rich
Tory co-chair Ben Elliot – Sarah Sands now turns out to be Akshata Murty’s
public relations adviser.
The contempt that vast swathes of the public now have for Rishi Sunak’s tax-avoiding wife is, however, unlikely to bother the former Today editor and old friend of Boris Johnson too much. She has an extraordinary ability to block out bad news.
I recall going in to see Sands during her brief tenure as editor of the Sunday Telegraph with the paper’s lawyer, Julia Braybook, when we’d proposed to use some photographs of the pop star James Blunt on my page. Julia pointed out there would be privacy and copyright infringements in publishing them that could cost the paper a fortune. Sands’s reaction was to put her hands over her ears and say that she hadn’t heard what had just been said. Julia and I looked at each other in embarrassed silence. Wiser heads prevailed and the photographs were never published.
