Dougie Smith strongly divides opinion among the senior Tories who have worked with him. He had his access to Downing Street revoked by Liz Truss when she was briefly Prime Minister but once Rishi Sunak was installed by Tory MPs in a second leadership coup he was allowed back in.

At the time one of Liz Truss’s former cabinet ministers told Express.co.uk: “What worries me most about Rishi Sunak is the people he surrounds himself with. For example, he has brought back Dougie Smith. That’s unforgivable, Smith is one of the worst people I have had to work with.”

But who is the man who provokes such strength of feeling and four out of the five last Conservative Prime Ministers believed was essential for their operation?

READ MORE: Rishi Sunak warned ‘rivals are circling’ as bleak poll offers Tories no hope

Early years

Dougie Smith was born in Edinburgh in 1962. His father Malcolm ran a business making life jackets and nautical equipment.

He studied at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, where he was elected vice-chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) but was removed as he had incorrectly claimed to be a student at Napier Technical College. He later dropped out of university in his final year.

During this time, he was arrested over allegations he threatened to kill a fellow FCS member Toby Baxendale.

With student politics having proven to be his passion, Dougie made some firm connections in the party which brought him into the world of work – starting off at the think tank Adam Smith Institute, and later the Committee for a Free Britain and Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party – where he got to know even more names and faces.

Around this time, he also co-founded a group called Fever Parties which ran orgies for under-40s swingers in the 1990s.

He was still involved with the group when working for the party and it was exposed by a newspaper but was not sacked.

The swingers group was for under 40s and he boasted it was “the SAS of sex”.

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Conservatives

He then wound up as the coordinator of Conservatives for Change, a Tory think tank founded in 2002 by Francis Maude and was regularly writing speeches for Tory MPs. But he became a serious player in the party in 2006 during the MPs expenses scandal when as an adviser to the then opposition leader David Cameron he decided which MPs had gone beyond the pale and which ones had to go.

Among those who were ditched was former Gosport MP Sir Peter Viggers who had tried and failed to claim for a duck house. Viggers was one of a number who believed that they were removed more because of the desire for a clearout of veteran MPs and less for the scandal.

Smith would go into Downing Street with Cameron and serve him then Theresa May and Boris Johnson before being temporarily removed by Truss.

The power he wielded behind the scenes became the stuff of legend for people in the Westminster bubble.

It was claimed (and still is) that no minister would be appointed without his say-so or approval. He also was highly influential in getting people he approved of into safe seats. According to some, this included Rishi Sunak himself when he got William Hague’s Richmond seat in Yorkshire.

As one former ministerial adviser told the Daily Telegraph: “If you want a senior job in Government the first question is, ‘Is Dougie happy with you?’ because if you don’t have his support you can forget it.”

Most recently he has become an obsession with close allies of Boris Johnson who believe that he was instrumental in getting the former Prime Minister removed as part of “team Rishi”.

It is claimed that in Downing Street he can attend whichever meeting he wants even if not formally invited.

More recently though he has become credited with trying to force the government to take a much tougher stance on woke issues.

In particular, as a Scot, he was highly influential in the UK Government blocking Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, a move which saw the former SNP leader quit.

Had it become law male rapists could have insisted on going to all female prisons if they decided to reidentify as a woman.

Meeting Munira Mirza

Alongside him was his wife Munira Mirza who was also a senior adviser to Mr Johnson and is also accused of being part of a conspiracy against the former Prime Minister.

Mirza, 45, was the director of the Number 10 policy unit.

She is still rumoured to be a regular visitor to Downing Street and an unofficial adviser.

Born in Oldham, her family originally came from Pakistan and she entered politics as a revolutionary Communist before becoming a Tory.

The couple have a son Robbie born in 2013 five years after they married.

During Boris’s premiership, they were described as “the most influential couple in Downing Street…who you have never heard of”.

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