When Dido Harding returned to her Somerset home by car on Sunday afternoon, she was towing her horsebox. An equine enthusiast for decades and board member of the Jockey Club, horses are how the boss of the government's Test and Trace programme relaxes.
Government sources point out she has achieved the equivalent of "building an operation the size of Tesco in a matter of months". And whilst the vast increase in testing capacity has been impressive (sic), a key metric for suppressing the virus concerns the percentage of close contacts traced. The government's scientists say it must be
above 80% for the system to be effective, but that target was last hit in mid-June.
This month's figures have been getting progressively worse, with just
under 60% of close contacts being traced. Critics argue that by consistently missing such an important target, more people are becoming infected, more hospitalised, and more will die.
Yet Baroness Harding retains - at least for now - the support and respect of her two direct bosses: Boris Johnson and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case. And she remains a convenient lightning rod for criticism. It may help that she is loyal and well connected in Conservative circles. David Cameron was a university contemporary at Oxford (
and appointed her a Baroness) while her husband, John Penrose, is a Tory MP.
Whatever her skills, communicating carefully may not be among them. Last month, she attracted criticism after telling a Commons committee that the surge in testing demand when schools returned after the summer had
caught her by surprise.
That admission is perhaps why Downing Street has repeatedly blocked interview requests. At a time when cabinet ministers are having to defend her almost on a daily basis, the one person seemingly unwilling to publicly defend Dido Harding's work is her.