One person, each day, to help make sense of the election.
Seen this week defending Rishi Sunak’s disputed claims that Labour would push up taxes by £2,000, Claire Coutinho is one of the prime minister’s closest allies. She’s been an MP since 2019 and was the first of her cohort to enter the Cabinet, becoming Energy Secretary only three years into her parliamentary career. But Coutinho’s ties with the PM go back further: she was special adviser to Sunak when he was a junior Treasury minister, before being given the super-safe seat of East Surrey. A reliable media performer, Coutinho has rewarded her boss for his patronage by pushing his attack lines and implementing his strategies, including his decision to delay the phase-out of diesel and petrol engines. As for that dubious tax-hike claim, this is not her first rodeo: last year Coutinho was taken to task for falsely alleging that Labour planned a meat tax.
