{"id":121264,"date":"2023-11-03T14:00:21","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T14:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gendermyn.com\/?p=121264"},"modified":"2023-11-03T14:00:21","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T14:00:21","slug":"meet-dougie-smith-the-powerful-no-10-adviser-youve-probably-never-heard-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gendermyn.com\/politics\/meet-dougie-smith-the-powerful-no-10-adviser-youve-probably-never-heard-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Dougie Smith, the powerful No 10 adviser you’ve probably never heard of"},"content":{"rendered":"

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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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

READ MORE: <\/strong> Rishi Sunak warned ‘rivals are circling’ as bleak poll offers Tories no hope<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Early years<\/h2>\n

Dougie Smith was born in Edinburgh in 1962. His father Malcolm ran a business making life jackets and nautical equipment.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

During this time, he was arrested over allegations he threatened to kill a fellow FCS member Toby Baxendale.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Referendum Party – where he got to know even more names and faces.<\/p>\n

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

He was still involved with the group when working for the party and it was exposed by a newspaper but was not sacked.<\/p>\n

The swingers group was for under 40s and he boasted it was “the SAS of sex”.<\/p>\n

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