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LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is finally off on holiday in California — and he’s left his fixer-in-chief in charge.
Oliver Dowden — known as “Olive” to his friends — got the call-up to be Sunak’s deputy prime minister in April after predecessor Dominic Raab quit. But just who is the minister now left with his hand on the tiller? POLITICO has your back.
‘Safe pair of hands’
Dowden’s day job is to oversee the powerful U.K. Cabinet Office under the swanky and slightly-meaningless title of chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Cabinet Office tries to coordinate work that spans different government departments and get business agreed by top ministers through the civil service machine.
In his in-tray since taking up that job: contingency planning for a fresh winter of discontent as public sector workers staged rolling walkouts; and the small matter of King Charles III’s coronation.
Old friend and veteran Tory MP John Hayes reckons Dowden is well up to the task of filling in for Sunak. Dowden, Hayes said, knows how Whitehall works “as well or better than anyone else,” and would be a “safe pair of hands” while Sunak heads off to foreign shores.
As former deputy chief of staff to David Cameron when Cameron was prime minister, Dowden dealt with “lots of ups and downs and emergencies and crises,” Hayes, who worked closely with Dowden at the time, said.
“He is very calm and capable, clearly very able, and knows how to deal with the various vicissitudes of office,” Hayes added.
Dowden was state-educated — not a given in a British political scene dominated by posh private school types. His father worked in a factory in Watford and his mother as a pharmacist in St Albans.
His route to the top of politics is, however, a bit more tried and tested: Cambridge University, then a stint in the Conservative research department.
Beyond Olive, Dowden has earned a few more nicknames in his time. He was dubbed “the undertaker” by Cameron after he “played a big role in working out how to handle the individual cases of Tory MPs who got into trouble” over their expenses, author and commentator Andrew Gimson told the BBC’s Profile program late last year.
He had “the melancholy task of helping to work out which MPs we’re not going to make it and which we’re going to be saved,” Gimson said. Worth noting for any Tories contemplating a summer of scandal.
Patchy PMQs
Dowden’s had a few goes at stepping in for Sunak already — to mixed reviews.
Filling in at prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons saw him take flak from sharp-penned parliamentary sketch writers.
John Crace, the Guardian scribe, likened Sunak’s deputy to a “1980s holiday camp entertainer being mercilessly ripped apart by an audience that’s bored out of its mind,” adding: “Bloodsports are less cruel than leaving Dowden to fend for himself for half an hour.”
In the Times, Quentin Letts said Dowden exuded “the antiseptic daintiness of a British Airways cabin steward” when standing-in for the prime minister in the chamber.
POLITICO’s own Andrew McDonald prayed for the end during one low-energy sparring session and rated the poor guy 4/10.
But what he lacks in oratory skills, Dowden appears to make up for in political nous.
In 2019 he was one of the three rising stars, along with Sunak and Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, dubbed the “three Musketeers” by colleagues after they backed Boris Johnson’s leadership early in a joint article.
Dowden was handsomely rewarded with the Cabinet job of culture secretary and made a name for himself as Johnson’s chief anti-woke warrior.
In that role he vocally warned museums they must “retain and explain” controversial statues with links to slavery and staunchly defended the singing of the “Land of Hope and Glory” — colonial overtones and all — at the Last Night of the Proms.
He also ordered the flying of the union flag on U.K. government buildings each and every day, in a thumbing of the nose at calls for Scottish independence.
He was out in the cold during Liz Truss’ tumultuous and brief stint at the top of British politics, but his loyalty to Sunak — her rival-turned-successor — has certainly paid off.