A former editor of the Sun will take up a senior communications role at the heart of government.
David Dinsmore, editor of the tabloid from 2013 to 2015, will be a civil service appointment rather than a political adviser, tasked with improving the government’s communications operation. The role is separate to the No 10 director of communications.
The Telegraph reported that Keir Starmer interviewed the candidates who made the final shortlist and is said to have been impressed with Dinsmore’s understanding of modern communication challenges.
The role is a new position called the permanent secretary for communications, created after the prime minister voiced concerns about government communications late last year.
Dinsmore started his career in journalism as a reporter for the Scottish Sun in 1990 and rose to become its editor in 2006. He has held a number of senior roles at the Sun including managing editor and helped to oversee the launch of the Sunday edition.
Dinsmore currently works at News UK, which publishes the Sun, the Times and Sunday Times, where he has been chief operating officer for the past decade.
While editor of the Sun in 2014, Dinsmore was named “sexist of the year” after a poll run by a feminist campaigning coalition called End Violence Against Women. The Sun was at the time still publishing photographs of topless women each day on page three of the newspaper – it stopped in 2015.
Dinsmore is not the first senior tabloid journalist to transition into a communications role at Downing Street.
Andy Coulson, the former editor of the now defunct News of the World, worked for David Cameron in opposition and then in Downing Street, before resigning as director of communications in 2011 over the phone-hacking scandal.
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Alastair Campbell was political editor of the Daily Mirror before he became Tony Blair’s most senior communications adviser.
In March, Starmer’s director of communications, Matthew Doyle, resigned from his role after nine months in No 10.