No 10 to improve image with help of social media influencers

Prime minister Boris Johnson in Downing Street, London, after leaving a Cabinet meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). - Credit: PA

Downing Street is seeking to hire someone to help improve its image through engagements with social media influencers.

The Cabinet Office is currently advertising for a Relationship Manager – Influencers and Civil Society to sell Britain’s “climate action” efforts and role in the COP26 – the UN’s annual climate change summit meeting – to “high profile influencers around the globe”.

The successful candidate will work in Downing Street’s COP26 Unit, which interacts with all of Whitehall and departments internationally, and could be paid as much as £70,877 a year.

The UK will be hosting the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP26) in November 2021.

The advertisement comes after Alok Sharma’s demotion from business secretary to president of the COP26 summit was part of a No 10 rebrand of Brexit Britain ahead of Joe Biden taking office.

The Sunday Times reported Johnson had made the “mini-shuffle” to appease the incoming US president.

“Boris Johnson put a cabinet minister in charge of the COP26 climate change summit last week following a warning from Joe Biden’s team that there was no ‘heavy hitter’ running the show,” the paper reported.

“In the first sign of the US president-elect flexing his muscles with the UK, Biden’s climate change pointman John Kerry complained before Christmas that if Britain wanted to be taken seriously it would need to get a grip on preparations for the summit, which Britain is hosting in Glasgow in November.”