Daniel Korski

Daniel Korski was born in Denmark in 1974 or 1975.[1][2] His mother was among Jewish people expelled from Poland during the 1968 Polish political crisis.[3] Korski moved to the United Kingdom in 1997.[4] He studied at the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge.[3]

Korski reported for The Spectator as a war correspondent in Libya.[4] In 2008, he was described as a "Balkans expert" working at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a think tank.[5] In 2011, he was working as a senior policy fellow for the ECFR and running the Middle East programme there.[6][7] In 2012 he was appointed as a strategic adviser to Catherine Ashton, then working as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.[1]

Korski wokred as an adviser to the Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell.[8] He later served as deputy head of the Number 10 Policy Unit for the Conservative prime minister David Cameron from 2013 to 2016.[4] In 2013, his proposal to charge foreign students to attend state schools in the UK was rejected after criticism by government departments and the Liberal Democrats.[9] In 2015, he was criticised for putting pressure on the Greater London Authority over proposed restrictions to Uber, with Korski and Cameron opposed to proposed regulations that would limit the company.[10][11] He described proposed restrictions as "insane and luddite".[12] He met with Uber executives on several occasions, at 10 Downing Street, at their headquarters in California and at a private dinner.[12] His behaviour was described as lobbying for the company, a charge Korski denied.[12][13] The Information Commissioner's Office investigated why 10 Downing Street had denied that Korski's correspondence with City Hall existed.[14]

Also in 2015, Korski developed proposals to end the use of cash in the UK by 2020 to "to drive up productivity and disrupt some forms of criminal activity", which the chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne rejected.[15]

During the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, Korski helped run the Stronger in campaign supporting the UK remaining in the European Union.[13] He met European diplomats and told them to "think twice" before criticising the 2015–2016 United Kingdom renegotiation of European Union membership.[12] Korski texted and called John Longworth, the chair of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), and then spoke to the president of the BCC, shortly before Longworth was suspended from his role as chair of the British Chambers of Commerce for supporting the UK leaving the EU.[16][17][18] Korski was accused by the anti-EU politician Bernard Jenkin of breaking the code of conduct for special advisers over tweets in support of remaining in the European Union.[19] He "left frontline politics" in 2016.[4]

In 2017, Korski started the business Public.io (later branded PUBLIC), which supported technology companies to work with UK public services.[20] He said the business would provide support and advice about the public sector but not engage in lobbying.[13] The model required companies to give a 3% equity share.[21] He advertised connection to "GovStart speakers" including special advisers to ministers, some of whom were removed from listings after BuzzFeed News made inquiries about Cabinet Office clearance.[21] Initially, he selected ten companies and projects to "explore which public services to target and build up contacts in the relevant areas" for six months. He presented the ideas of these companies at 10 Downing Street.[21] In 2018, he chaired a conference about technology in government, "GovTech", which was attended by world leaders.[22] In 2021, the minster Theodore Agnew was accused of a conflict of interest for owning shares in PUBLIC while being in charge of procurement.[23] PUBLIC profited from the sale of one of the companies it funded to Greensill Capital for five million dollars.[23]

In 2019, Korski was appointed to a panel advising the trade secretary Liz Truss about freeport proposals.[24] He worked on the July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election campaign on Tom Tugendhat.[25] Korski applied to be the Conservative Party's candidate in the 2024 London mayoral election. He proposed implementing a levy on hotel stays to fund new police programmes and supported road pricing as an alternative to expansion of London's Ultra Low Emission Zone.[4]

Korski is married to Fiona Mcilwham, who served as ambassador to Albania from 2009 to 2012 and was appointed as private secretary to Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in 2019.[26] Korski serves as one of twenty vice presidents of the Jewish Leadership Council.[27] He was made a Commander of the Order of British Empire (CBE) in 2016 as part of David Cameron's resignation honours alongside other advisers.[4]