If Rishi Sunak is feeling under pressure over the potential for a Conservative wipeout, someone likely to be sharing that burden is his friend and closest political confidant, James Forsyth.
Despite having little public profile beyond Westminster circles and those familiar with his past role as political editor of the Spectator, Forsyth has been a near-constant companion to the prime minister since becoming his political secretary on Christmas Eve 2022.
Their relationship goes back further, to when they first met at Winchester college, an elite Hampshire private school. Forsyth went on to be the best man at Sunak’s wedding and played a key role in helping his friend become an MP.
In one way, that closeness has been viewed as an asset throughout their time in Downing Street. As one person who worked with both men in government told the Guardian: “Knowing they are friends means there was never any doubt that [Forsyth] was speaking for the PM.
“That’s a big deal given that there have been instances in recent history where political secretaries haven’t had that personal relationship with the prime minister and it makes everyone else’s job harder … We can be abrupt or frank with friends in a way we might not be with colleagues.”
Forsyth slotted into the job of political secretary with relative ease – with the role’s duties ranging from being a sounding board to a personal policy wonk for Sunak. In previous incarnations, the holder acted as the prime minister’s link to MPs, heading off dissent.
Initially, Forsyth was credited with sharpening up his friend’s premiership, leaving Tory MPs with the sense that competency was returning to Downing Street. Fraser Nelson, the editor of the Spectator, described it as “the Forsyth effect”.
Writing in the Spectator two months before he was appointed, Forsyth had said Sunak’s politeness was misunderstood as a “lack of toughness”. In the Times, he said his friend would be a “tricky opponent for Labour”, adding: “The fiscally conservative card is still, though, one of the strongest they have in their hand. In Sunak, the Tories have found the best person to play it.”
Yet, as a chaotic Conservative election campaign nears the end of the road – with a brutal postmortem likely to seek scapegoats – the closeness of that relationship, and the decisions that arose from it, are unlikely to escape negative scrutiny.
Despite having long-established relationships with ministers from his time at the Spectator and as a columnist for rightwing newspapers, Forsyth was always going to be a focus of suspicion for disaffected MPs angry at Sunak’s role in ousting Boris Johnson.
One Conservative MP who has been involved in more than their fair share of tussles with Sunak said this week that he feared Forsyth’s influence “had not been a good one”.
Even a more sympathetic Tory source said: “He’s very clever, kind and generous, but the Spectator is where he spent nearly all of his career before government. It’s part of what can be quite an insular Westminster environment.”
The same source suggested Forsyth was involved in the “wobble” of last year, when the Conservatives moved away from talking about their “five-point plan”, which included bringing immigration and inflation down and tackling the NHS backlog, to a strategy that became known as “let Rishi be Rishi”.
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On the plus side, Forsyth is credited with helping to steady the Conservative ship after the chaos of Liz Truss’s premiership and shoring up support among Brexiters. His fingerprints are also on what may yet be the standout achievement of Sunak’s time in office: the Windsor framework agreement that achieved a post-Brexit peace of sorts between the EU and Britain.
Forsyth is described as being a world away from the stereotype of backroom political operators that has taken root thanks to the TV show The Thick of It and figures such as Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former aide.
“James is a very mild-mannered, softly spoken and can come across as being quite nervous, not massively confident,” said a source with first-hand experience of his time in government. “He’s highly intelligent, a calming influence, not a boisterous Cummings style individual but rather the complete opposite. When he spoke, he commanded the room. He didn’t need to shout.”
The government role is not the first time Forsyth has assisted his friend. After Winchester they had gone their separate ways – Forsyth to Cambridge and then on to a successful journalism career, Sunak to Oxford and into banking. But a biography of Sunak by the Tory peer Michael Ashcroft recounts that when the future prime minister returned from the US in 2015 it was Forsyth who introduced the nascent politician to a range of Conservative contacts – not least the influential backroom fixer Dougie Smith. Sunak ended up being selected for what was then the safe Tory seat of Richmond in North Yorkshire.
Later on, Sunak’s career was helped by Forsyth’s wife, the former BBC and Guardian journalist Allegra Stratton, who served as communications chief for the then chancellor. Stratton and Forsyth regularly spend time with the Sunaks at their home in North Yorkshire. It is another reason that, come what may on 4 July, the friendship at the heart of Sunak’s premiership is likely to endure.
One person familiar with Forsyth from journalism and politics said: “He has effectively gone into government to help his friend – not because he himself has been harbouring any ambitions or wanted to impose an agenda. If he had wanted to work for the Tory party it’s clear he would have been able to any time. He’s in this because of his friend.”
