| Honorific Prefix: | The Right Honourable |
| The Lord Booth-Smith | |
| Office: | Downing Street Chief of Staff |
| Primeminister: | Rishi Sunak |
| Term Start: | 25 October 2022 |
| Term End: | 5 July 2024 |
| Predecessor: | Mark Fullbrook |
| Successor: | Sue Gray |
| Office1: | Special Adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer |
| Chancellor1: | Rishi Sunak |
| Term Start1: | February 2020 |
| Term End1: | July 2022 |
| Office2: | Special Adviser to the Prime Minister |
| Primeminister2: | Boris Johnson |
| Term Start2: | July 2019 |
| Term End2: | July 2020 |
| Office3: | Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal |
| Term Start3: | 21 August 2024 Life peerage |
| Birth Name: | Liam David Scott-Smith |
| Birth Place: | Stoke-on-Trent, England |
| Spouse: | -? |
| Children: | 2 |
| Alma Mater: | Loughborough University |
Liam David Scott Booth-Smith, Baron Booth-Smith (born 1987), is a British political adviser who served as Downing Street Chief of Staff under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak from October 2022 to July 2024. He previously served as Sunak's de facto chief of staff as head of the Joint Economic Unit during his chancellorship.
Liam was born Liam Scott-Smith in 1986[1] in Stoke-on-Trent and was raised by his mother Lisa, a single parent who lived on a council estate in north Staffordshire, as the eldest of three children.[2] [3]
Booth-Smith received funding to attend Newcastle-under-Lyme School under the Assisted Places Scheme to help bright students enter elite schools. After the scheme was discontinued in 1997, he attended the state-funded Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College. He read politics and social policy at Loughborough University, where he also played cricket.
Booth-Smith served as chief executive of the think tank Localis between 2016 and 2018, before serving as a special adviser to James Brokenshire as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government from 2018 to 2019, where Rishi Sunak was a junior minister.[4] In July 2019, Booth-Smith became a senior adviser to prime minister Boris Johnson upon his accession as prime minister. He had previously worked at the think tank Policy Exchange, specialising in housing policy.
In February 2020, as head of the Joint Economic Unit between 10 Downing Street and 11 Downing Street, Booth-Smith became the de facto chief of staff to Sunak, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer,[5] overseeing the Treasury's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. Booth-Smith gained the nickname "Travolta of the Treasury" for wearing a leather jacket with his shirt buttons undone.
Booth-Smith led Sunak's leadership campaign during the July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, and again in the subsequent October 2022 Conservative Party leadership election.
Booth-Smith was appointed as Downing Street Chief of Staff in October 2022 after Sunak became prime minister. He succeeded Mark Fullbrook, who was chief of staff to Liz Truss.
In 2023, the New Statesman named Booth-Smith as the ninth-most influential figure in British right-wing politics.[6]
He was paid between £140,000 and £145,000 per year.[7]
Booth-Smith was nominated for a life peerage in the 2024 Dissolution Honours.[8] [9] He was created Baron Booth-Smith, of Newcastle-under-Lyme in the County of Staffordshire, on 21 August 2024.
Liam was married in August 2013 to his first wife Helen, with whom he has a daughter born in 2015. Upon getting married he changed his surname from Scott-Smith to Booth-Smith. He married Olivia Oates in 2022.[10] Oates was a special adviser to Simon Clarke as a junior minister to Sunak at the Treasury, and previously a special adviser to Robert Jenrick as housing secretary.[11] They have a daughter.