The political turmoil of recent weeks has cut short a lot of holidays. Eleanor Shawcross, appointed by Rishi Sunak as the new head of the Downing Street policy unit, was among those racing back from sunnier climes so she could get herself into the pictures as the new prime minister made his first entrance at No 10.
“I don’t say Eleanor isn’t professional, but she has never lived among ordinary people – or had ordinary people as formative influences in her life – and yet she’s now involved in making decisions that will impact upon the lives of a great many ordinary people,” one Whitehall insider tells me. “She was one of the key influences on Sunak during his first unsuccessful leadership campaign and that was not a campaign that went big on humanity.”
Sometimes known as Eleanor Shawcross-Wolfson, she is typical of Sunak’s fabulously wealthy set. George Osborne’s former aide at the treasury is married to the Next boss Lord Wolfson, whose personal fortune is estimated to run into hundreds of millions. In 2013, he was earning £4.6m at a time when the average pay of Next employees was £10,000. He is also, needless to say, fanatically pro-Brexit.
Eleanor’s dad is William Shawcross, the author of an “admiring” biography of Rupert Murdoch. He was pro the Iraq war, supported waterboarding at Guantánamo Bay, has spoken of “a vast fifth column” of Muslims in Europe who “wish to destroy us”, and has fretted about “Britain’s humiliation” by “mass immigration” and multiculturalism. He has also from the outset been in favour of Brexit.
