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However, while I think Dominic can be many things (insert some of his own well-chosen language here), in my experience he went out of his way to empower the women he worked alongside, promoting women into teams he built and calling out belittling behaviour against junior women. In early 2020, he tasked me with identifying talented, overlooked female MPs to promote in the upcoming reshuffle. Perhaps I would say all this, as a known ally of the man. But many of the women who have worked with him in government – all of whom have deep respect for Helen; some are her friends – have said the same thing to me.
‘Dom was great to work with,’ said Pamela Dow, a former civil servant with first-hand experience of Dominic in the Department for Education from 2010 and then in the Cabinet Office from 2019-2022. ‘He is gender, rank, age and colour blind. His candour and self-awareness were refreshing in a culture of doublespeak and passive-aggression. Whitehall, Westminster and the world is full of women whose careers and professional skills thrived from working with Dom in Government.’
Dominic explained himself to the inquiry by saying he was ‘much ruder about men’. Munira Mirza, the former Director of the Number 10 Policy Unit, explains this a little better:
‘Dom was an equal opportunities martinet. He was scathing about anyone who was screwing up or blocking things in the system but I’d say he generally punched up rather than down and he was always courteous to junior civil servants.’
Those who are still officials, understandably, wanted to keep their remarks anonymous. One former colleague of his ‘from the get-go Dom was nothing short of actively supportive and empowering – a magnitude greater than anyone else at that time. He went out of his way, regularly, to personally ensure I was OK, where I needed to be, and able to crack on, in an environment that was regularly conducive to the opposite.’
All Number Tens reflect the principle, and culture is set at the top. Under Theresa May, though hardly perfect, the fact the most weighty voice at the table was a woman is significant. Several of her top team were women, including her chief of staff, deputy chief of staff and director of communications. Under Boris Johnson, it was different. I certainly don’t think he had any intention to create a culture that left women out, but I don’t believe it was a priority of his to include them in decision making. As Helen’s testimony makes clear, this lack of diversity had real-world outcomes.
Helen is absolutely right, too, to talk about a macho culture in government. For the most part, politics is littered with misogyny and sexism – long before and since Dominic’s time. Within months of taking my first job in Downing Street, the 2017 Pestminster scandal had hit, shortly followed by grim briefings against the then-PM Theresa May by her own MPs, advising her to ‘bring a noose’ to a meeting of the 1922 Committee. And, of course, there was George Osborne’s vow that he would not rest until Mrs May was ‘chopped up in bags in my freezer’. Anyone keeping an eye on the news can see that, regrettably, things have not improved years later. Like Helen, I was often the only woman in a room over the course of my career. In a simple numbers game, there just aren’t enough women in Parliament and government, particularly at the top. And we’re shedding the brilliant ones that we have, Pamela and Helen among them.
I suppose that isn’t for this inquiry to get into, but the systemic need and failure to get women into and upwards in government and Parliament deserves serious scrutiny. I can think of an extremely talented, fair-minded former senior civil servant to chair such a discussion.
For now, though, we desperately need the Covid inquiry to get to the bottom of how and why the British state failed the public during Covid. Hopefully the next chapter will focus on what people did, rather than what they said – and how we can avoid a repeat of this utter disaster.
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