As Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has been more than happy to splash the cash. He has always been dismissive about money: in 2009 as the Mayor of London, he described his £250,000 salary with the Telegraph newspaper as “chicken feed.”
His administration has recently spent £2.6m on a new Press Briefing room for the government in 10 Downing Street, which will not even be used for daily pressers anymore. And now, he is taking flack for renovations made to the Prime Ministerial flat above Number 10.
When they enter the office, Prime Ministers have an already-large allowance of £30,000 to make changes where necessary to the apartment that they will be living in for the next few years. But concerns are growing about an extra £58,000 that Boris Johnson might have used that was spent on furnishing the flat.
Carrie Symonds, Johnson’s partner, is said to have overseen the refurbishment and had an influential role in giving the place a makeover from the “John Lewis” look under Theresa May, with even suggestions she wanted gold wallpaper.
However, poor design choices are not the issue here. There is a concern, that the Electoral Commission feels there is “reasonable grounds” for, that Johnson broke electoral law with the funding for the renovations. These were first alleged by the Prime Minister’s former chief aide, Dominic Cummings.
Cummings had left Downing Street in November after allegedly falling out with allies of Symonds in Downing Street, over a battle for influence over Boris Johnson. He had stayed quiet since then, but when a separate scandal of leaked Prime Minister texts emerged, he was implicated as the leak. Cummings came out and defended himself on his blog, and went further to allege “possibly illegal” flat renovations from the government, which opened a new pack of worms.
The £58,000 that Johnson possibly used to pay for further renovations came from Lord Brownlow, a conservative donor who was made a peer in Theresa May’s resignation honours list. Brownlow has been a recent friend to Prime Ministers – he invested in a fashion label of David Cameron’s wife, Samantha; and donated to Theresa May’s Maidenhead constituency office.
He was also vice-chairman of the Tory party between 2017 and 2020. Brownlow is an avid charitable supporter and had tried to create a “Downing Street trust” to legitimately give money for the Government to use, but Cabinet Secretary Simon Case says that a charitable trust cannot cover “private areas” of Downing Street. Instead, emails say that the money was paid to the Conservative Party, which might have helped pay for the work.
The Downing Street line is that Boris Johnson paid for the rest of the refurbishments from his own pockets, but that is difficult to accept. Johnson has constantly complained about his money, and even regarding the flat he once said he couldn’t afford the renovation. Rules might have been broken regarding properly disclosing political donations by the party, which the Electoral Commission will investigate.
The “cash for curtains” story that Johnson has insisted is a “farrago of nonsense” is just one that has come out in the last few weeks, that have included the Greensill lobbying scandal regarding former Prime Minister David Cameron’s access to government; Johnson offering tax breaks for Sir James Dyson to manufacture ventilators in the UK for the Covid-19 pandemic; and recent reports that Johnson’s phone number has been widely available online for the last fifteen years, causing security concerns.
However, the truth is that this will probably not sink the Prime Minister, whose public support has grown against Labour’s Keir Starmer recently, with 40% of the recent ratings.
So does this recent scandal matter? It should, but Johnson is seemingly bulletproof to criticism in the eyes of the public. Though, the Prime Minister’s flat might need another renovation sometime soon, given how much grime and sleaze Johnson has brought to Downing Street in the last two years.
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