Public policy specialist Eleanor Shawcross has been drafted in to advise Conservative leadership hopeful Rishi Sunak.
Regarded as “super-smart”, Shawcross had famously worked as a senior aide to George Osborne who was the chancellor of the exchequer between 2010 and 2016 including the months leading up to the Brexit referendum.
She has long been associated with the Conservative party as she was Osborne’s special adviser during his stint as the shadow chancellor from 2007 to 2010.
The University of Oxford graduate also served as the chief of staff to the secretary of state at the Department of Work and Pensions, having previously spent several years at the Treasury on the Council of Economic Advisers.
Sources told The Telegraph that Shawcross was “helping out on policy stuff” of Sunak by tweaking and changing the manifesto which was already in place.
Now that she is part of Sunak’s campaign, she could potentially assume a significant role in the next government if Sunak succeeds in his Tory leadership race and becomes the prime minister replacing incumbent Boris Johnson. But his close allies said it was too early to decide on her role in the immediate future in the event of his victory.
Shawcross’s current appointment will lead to speculation that she could be closely involved in drawing up the Conservatives’ manifesto for the next general election, the newspaper said.
The wife of Tory peer Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise previously worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Blavatnik School of Government. She began her career at the Boston Consulting Group.
She is currently a trustee at the Winnicott Foundation.
Sunak last week won the second round of ballot in the Tory leadership contest with 101 votes – the most by any contestant. Four other candidates left in the race are trade minister Penny Mordaunt, foreign secretary Liz Truss, former minister Kemi Badenoch and backbencher Tom Tugendhat.
