The ball keeps rolling down that hill

John Smith has a TCW piece on Boris nominating Ross Kempsell to be a member of the House of Lords and the influence of Carrie behind the scenes.

OF the 20 or so people nominated by Boris Johnson to become members of the House of Lords, one name in particular caught my eye: Ross Kempsell.

He is 30 years old and, if accepted by the Lords appointments commission, would be one of the youngest people ever to receive a life peerage.

Which may not matter if the young chap turns out to be notably more capable than average, but Smith suggests that ability may not have been the main elevating influence. Not a surprise of course, but reminders are worth accumulating.

Anybody who has read Michael Ashcroft’s stinging book about Boris Johnson’s wife, Carrie, titled First Lady, may remember that Ross Kempsell has a walk-on part in it.

According to Ashcroft, in the summer of 2018, Johnson (still married to his then-wife Marina) had begun spending increasing amounts of time with Carrie, who was eager to have some influence on his political life.

In the book, one of Johnson’s close associates tells Ashcroft:

‘That summer, (Carrie) tried to muscle in. She badmouthed some of his staff and tried to persuade him that he needed to hire new people on his team. She invited Alex Wickham and Ross Kempsell, who had both recently left (political website) Guido Fawkes, to Thame to play tennis with Boris. He didn’t listen to her and they were never hired.’

So it seems Kempsell was in fact (originally) a friend of Carrie’s, rather than a brilliantly talented politico whom Johnson himself discovered. And that he and Johnson got to know each other on the tennis court!

The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of how important it is to be socially well connected as opposed to merely capable. But we knew that.