Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s communications director Allegra Stratton has been poached to become Boris Johnson’s spokeswoman for televised briefings, a Government source has told the PA news agency.
The Prime Minister has been seeking an adviser to give on-the-record White House-style briefings to the press to take part on camera.
Number 10 is in the middle of an intense interview process for the high-profile £100,000-a-year job.
Whoever wins will have to face the might of the political lobby in a new press room designed with enough seats for 60 reporters.
Downing Street did not comment but a source said that Ms Stratton will be appointed to the role.
Ms Stratton has a rich history in broadcast journalism, having been national editor of ITV News, and co-presented ITV’s Peston on Sunday.
She studied archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge before starting out as a producer for the BBC.
She became a political correspondent for The Guardian and returned to broadcast as political editor of Newsnight, a post she held for three years.
Former colleagues say she is a person of “genuine integrity” who will push back if she is asked to say something on TV that she does not think is right.
One said: “She is a very serious person, a very intelligent person, a person of principle. Someone like Allegra will push back against her employers if they ask her to say something she doesn’t believe.”
