Philip Bassett

Philip Alan Bassett is a former Downing Street advisor who later became special adviser to Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. He is a former Industrial Editor at The Times and is married to Baroness Symons, a Minister at the Foreign Office. He went to Oxford University.

Bassett wrote the briefing paper for Tony Blair's disastrous Women's Institute speech in June 2000. The New Statesman identified him as being involved in anti-union propaganda at Downing Street:

Dame Philip Bassett (so named because he is the consort of Lady Symons of Vernham Dean) has been fingered as the Downing Street rubbisher of the Fire Brigades Union. This should surprise nobody. Bassett, director of No 10's strategic communications unit, is a former labour editor of the Financial Times. He was also the author of Strike Free, a paean of praise to the no-strike deals pioneered by his heroes in the electricians' union at the height of Thatcherism.