The Prime Minister has yet to learn that the public hates when it feels like he has something to hide
An interesting thing about criticism that is often directed at Sir Keir Starmer is that he’s sometimes described as a boring individual - and yet when politics isn’t as boring [as it probably should be], we’re left with Boris Johnson as a consequence rather than a result.
Many people knew that when Boris Johnson was elected his premiership would usher in a new era of political turbulence.
I doubt, however, that many knew it would look like it has or be ‘this bad’ - almost every week where something new occurs that fundamentally distracts from the political movements and motions, and legislation that ultimately governs our very lives and is made impossible in delivering [for better or worse] by whatever scandals engulfs the party from one week to the next.
His supporters and those who defend him will, of course, attribute it all to some insidious establishment media “Remainer conspiracy” to oust the Prime Minister and yet this somehow seems a mischaracterisation of the truth when the latest round of allegations being catapulted like a sheep’s corpse at the Prime Minister come from The Mail and The Times - both Conservative leaning papers.
Except - this would be true, if only the Mail on Sunday and The Times stood by their stories.
This one [below] from The Times corroborated by Boris Johnson’s biographer Sonia Purnell and originally published by veteran lobby journalist Simon Walters. Walters stands by the story:
That story was dropped from publication.
Another from Mailonline [recovered using the Wayback Machine] states the following:
Boris Johnson was last night accused of trying to appoint Carrie Johnson to a top taxpayer-funded position while Foreign Secretary before he was blocked by colleagues who discovered they were having an affair.
The Prime Minister, who served as chief of the Foreign Office between 2016 and 2018, wanted to make his future wife his £100,000-a-year chief of staff before allies intervened, the Times reports.
Those close to Mr Johnson feared the move would have been a clear breach of ethical standards within one of the four great offices of state.
At the time, staffers learned of the Foreign Secretary and the-then Ms Symonds true relationship after a Tory MP allegedly walked in on them in a 'compromising position' in Mr Johnson's office at the start of 2018.
He was, at the time, still married to lawyer Marina Wheeler, his second wife of 25 years and mother to four of his children.
A source close to the-then Foreign Secretary and involved in the decision to block Ms Symond's appointment told the Times: 'It would have left [Boris] dangerously exposed'.
Appointing his then-mistress as Mr Johnson's right-hand woman would have been 'a far bigger scandal' than ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock's infamous lockdown-busting kiss with aide Gina Colangelo, the source added.
Another anonymous source, speaking to the Times, described the decision to block Mr Johnson promoting Ms Symonds as one that would protect him.
'An illicit relationship with Carrie was none of our business, making her chief of staff was definitely our business. Our job was to protect him.'
They continued: 'We knew what was going on between them and that it was an insane risk to him to let him do it'.
Having split from Ms Wheeler in September 2018, there was little pause before Mr Johnson was publicly linked to Carrie Symonds, described at the time as a 'party-loving Tory aide'.
Ms Symonds had been a high-profile figure in Westminster for almost a decade, holding senior positions at Tory HQ and as an adviser to Cabinet Ministers.
She crossed paths with Mr Johnson after joining the Tories as a press officer in 2009, before campaigning for him during the 2010 London mayoral selection and working on the successful 'Back Boris' campaign to re-elect him in 2012.
By age 29, Carrie was made Head of Communications for the Conservative Party, and had a string of high-profile ministers backing her, including Sajid Javid.
Around the same time and Mr Johnson and Ms Wheeler were finalising their split.
After her affair with Johnson was exposed, The Times quoted an unnamed source as saying: '[Carrie] was one of these girls who would be at all the parties. I can't remember her doing any work that was really good but she was at every party going.
'The Tories love a social gathering and there were always a lot of parties for her to be at. The rest of us always wondered how she could afford all the dresses and designer handbags and the going out, on her kind of salary. Her friends were all beautiful. It looked like an episode of Love Island.'
By September 2018, with rumours about her friendship with Mr Johnson swirling around Westminster, it was reported he had been seen in Rules restaurant in Covent Garden with a 'young attractive' blonde woman.
They are said to have spent two hours at a corner table while two bodyguards sat nearby. At the time, one onlooker was reported as saying: 'It seemed quite an intimate meal and hardly anything to do with any great matters of State.'
Firmer evidence emerged in the form of 'mischievous text messages from Boris' which Ms Symonds showed to friends at a wedding.
Mr Johnson would later marry Carrie at the Catholic Westminster Cathedral on May 29, 2021 and was followed by a celebration in the Rose Garden at Number 10 Downing Street.
So why were these two stories dropped from publication?
Political pressure - it seems.
Incidentally, No. 10 has both denied and not denied that it intervened in both papers dropping their stories with the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson stating:
“We were approached before publication. We spoke to them after publication as well. I don’t know the exact timeline of it.”
Carrie Johnson’s spokesperson has said, however:
“This is a grubby, discredited story turned down by most reputable media outlets because it isn’t true. The facts speak for themselves.”
Boris Johnson’s former Special Advisor Dominic Cummings also threw this allegation into the mix for good measure - although this was stated as being “untrue” by Downing St:
No. 10 denies that the Prime Minister personally intervened in the matter - and that it was ‘his team’ instead.
Cummings’ allegations were given some veracity by the Mirror that reported Carrie Johnson was going to be awarded, “possible new environmental roles for her in autumn 2020, either on the COP 26 summit or with the Royal Family.”
Previously, the story relating to Boris Johnson’s attempts to appoint Carrie [who at the time was his mistress] was published in prominent Conservative Party donor Lord Ashcroft’s book ‘First Lady’, portions of which were serialised in The Daily Mail. For example [below]:
The story was also corroborated by former Conservative MP and former Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan, who wrote about it in his diaries, according to The Independent.
Sir Alan Duncan wrote:
“Apparently Carrie Symonds, head of press in Conservative HQ, is due to become a SPAD in the FCO. It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
In 2018, too, Tim Shipman wrote in The Times:
“…fresh infighting came amid claims that an ally of Johnson’s was forced out of CCHQ this year as a result of her links to cabinet Brexiteers. Carrie Symonds, the party’s former head of communications, left this summer. A plan to send her to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to work with Johnson was scrapped.”
Quite why the Daily Mail and Times were ‘frit’ on this occasion is unclear, though as the Prime Minister seeks to draw a line under ‘Partygate’ it would probably be seen by Downing St. as undesirable to have another scandal at the forefront of the media cycle of news while heading into two crucial by-elections.
That said #1, in ‘Tory cost-of-living crisis latest’ fresh from the Conservative Party Summer Ball as general strike action seems likely as a result of Conservative Party intransigence while Tories flog access and political influence to the highest bidder:
Business Insider’s Henry Dyer avers:
That said #2, in ‘Prime Minister jumps the NHS waiting list’ latest:
[NB: In ‘living with Covid’ latest, this page also acknowledges the rise in Covid admissions, too, with further pressure being put on NHS services that might otherwise not exist at this time of year - it hasn’t gone away despite the government’s best attempts to make it disappear by merely saying so]
The Prime Minister is perfectly capable of overseeing numerous scandals all at the same time irrespective of whatever story takes precedence over the other.
In the case of Carrie Johnson being offered a plum job [or several depending on the timeframe we’re looking at between 2018 and 2020], the shadow of Lord Geidt - covered previously - looms far and wide over Boris Johnson.
Geidt tells the Telegraph - again, not a ‘Remain’ or ‘opposition paper’ - that he believes the allegations being made against the Prime Minister, “could be ripe for investigation.”
Of course there may be an issue here relating to this - two, really:
The first [and most obvious] is that Boris Johnson is “considering” not replacing Lord Geidt as ethics adviser.
In fairness to Johnson, there may be some level of acknowledgment to this in the sense that he might agree with this page’s assessment that a man who neither understands ethics nor heeds advice would require an ethics adviser.
The second, also relating to above, is that even if Johnson does appoint an ethics adviser, Lord Geidt made a clear and succinct point that it was essentially a ‘mickey mouse’ role in any case.
Opposition are putting forth a motion to ensure the Prime Minister appoints a new ethics adviser citing “an ethical vacuum” in a “sleaze-ridden” Downing Street - there’s a chance they will win, too, though being an opposition motion, the government is not compelled to act thus revealing the ‘sleaze-ridden vacuum’ with a greater clarity to which most people are already aware.
Hence polls indicating a fairly significant drop in Boris Johnson’s approval rating.
So - what now?