For the best part of two decades, Rachel Whetstone has served as public relations guru to some of Britain’s most powerful Conservative politicians and the world’s best-known corporations.
Born in East Sussex to a wealthy family, the 49-year-old has a Conservative pedigree. Her grandfather, Antony Fisher, made his fortune importing intensive chicken farming from the US to the UK; he used his millions to help set up right-leaning thinktanks and lobby groups, such as the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Adam Smith Institute.
The family’s success allowed them to send Whetstone to Benenden, an exclusive boarding school for girls with royal alumni including Princess Anne.
After reading history at Bristol University, Whetstone joined Conservative central office, where she worked alongside David Cameron and George Osborne.
Whetstone was well-regarded and was eventually chosen by Michael Howard, the home secretary at the time, to serve as one of his most trusted advisers. It was then that she first met her future husband, Steve Hilton, the political strategist who would become Cameron’s right-hand man.
Whetstone went on to join the media company Carlton Communications, where she worked side by side with Cameron in the mid-1990s. A firm friendship blossomed and she and Hilton were later invited to be godparents to the Camerons’ late son Ivan.Whetstone was at the heart of the so-called Notting Hill set, a group of young, up-and-coming Conservatives based in the affluent area of west London.
She left Carlton in 2001 for a brief stint with Portland Communications, the PR firm set up by Tony Blair’s former adviser Tim Allan, who recalls a skill with communications that enabled her to “see round corners”, as well as a “phenomenal work ethic”.
“She would call me at night from the office and she would be telling me to work harder and get things done,” he said. “She’s disarmingly frank with her bosses and they value her candour and honesty.”
Whetstone left Portland to become chief of staff to Howard when he became leader of the Conservative party, in 2003.
As Howard’s political secretary, she was at the forefront of Conservative politics when the party was in opposition to Blair’s Labour government.
But her relationship with Cameron was damaged in 2004, when it was revealed she had been having an affair with Viscount Astor, Samantha Cameron’s stepfather.
“It was something of a shock and there was a period when they became less close,” said one friend of the Camerons and Whetstone. “The fact it involved someone related to Sam meant there was froideur for a bit but it was patched up after a while.”
Whetstone left politics not long afterwards, when Howard’s 2005 general election campaign ended in resounding defeat.
She moved back into the corporate world, joining Google in 2005 and rising to become senior vice-president of communications and public policy.
DJ Collins, founder of the PR firm Milltown Partners and Google’s vice-president of communications and policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, worked with Whetstone for seven years.
“She is a very rare person who genuinely puts everyone else’s interests before her own,” he said. “She combines extraordinary intelligence with a massive heart. Of course she’s well connected but what’s important is not who she knows but what she does.”
Another senior colleague at Google said: “If anyone had a baby, she would personally buy them a present and write them a note, rather than getting someone else to do it.
“She worked ferociously hard. If there’s one weakness it’s that she’s psychologically incapable of not having an opinion.”
Whetstone left Google to join Uber in 2015, shortly after writing an acerbic blogpost addressed to the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, taking issue with criticism of Google in the Wall Street Journal, part of his news empire.
Her departure from Uber followed several scandals involving the company, including an explosive blogpost by an employee alleging incidents of sexual harassment.
Travis Kalanick, the company’s chief executive, indicated that she would remain an adviser and a friend in an email to staff that included a picture of the pair on a hiking trip.
Whetstone and Hilton, who have two sons together, have a home in the small town of Atherton, California. Her Who’s Who entry lists her hobbies as gardening, riding and travel.
