What is Boris Johnson accused of now – and should we be surprised?

A little over three years after he completed his relatively brief, but action-packed, premiership, Boris Johnson faces more controversy about his behaviour as a public figure. A cache of documents mostly related to the period since he left office has raised questions of probity in the use of taxpayers’ money. The “Boris Papers”, as they’ve been dubbed, should probably be filed, as with so much else concerning the charismatic politician, under “shocking but not surprising”. Other things being equal, they wouldn’t help any chance, albeit remote, of a comeback…

They’ve been leaked by an American outfit named Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDS), a little like the famous WikiLeaks of some years ago, but curated rather than “raw”. They comprise some 2GB of data, being 1,820 files – emails, letters, invoices, spreadsheets, speeches and business contracts, some in the public domain.

DDS say they don’t know the provenance of the documents. They raise questions about the “Office of Boris Johnson” (OBJ), a company, and how he may have used public money to subsidise OBJ’s efforts to generate income for Johnson, who has numerous financial commitments. However, the few documents related to his time at Number 10 are also a bit problematic.

Making money, as perhaps evidenced by his purchase in 2023 of a fine £4m listed property in Oxfordshire (now extended). His revenue-raising adventures include lobbying Saudi Arabian officials on behalf of a company, which he, Johnson, co-chairs, and a meeting with the morally ambiguous president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, after which he reportedly received more than £220,000 from a hedge fund.

As with ministers in office, there are rules about the exploitation of contacts gained during their time being used for private gain after they’ve left government, to guard against real and perceived conflicts of interest. The regulator, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), comments: “We are currently looking at the information… Acoba has already investigated and reported breaches of the business appointment rules by Mr Johnson. Where there is evidence of further non-compliance, we will investigate.”

Not exactly. One entry suggests that Johnson had David Brownlow, a businessman, for dinner the day after the second national lockdown was announced in November 2020. Subsequently, Brownlow gave Johnson £58,000 towards the cost of renovating/decorating the Johnsons’ private quarters in Downing Street. (The then independent adviser on ministerial standards, Christopher Geidt, judged later that Johnson had not broken the ministerial code over the payments, but had acted “unwisely”).

Another potential breach of lockdown social distancing rules in June 2020 is also indicated in the leaked diary, when the Johnsons entertained three people in their flat and the garden.

From a well-meaning arrangement called the public duty costs allowance (PDCA), exclusively available to former premiers. It was set up after the fall of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 to help her and her ex-PM successors pay for the staff needed to, for example, respond to letters, travel to make speeches for academic, public policy or historical purposes, to represent the nation or any similar activity clearly related to their time in office and their public duties. Obviously, paying for a former premier to go abroad on business shouldn’t be covered. The allowance is capped at £115,000 per annum. Johnson has claimed £182,000 PDCA since he was ousted in 2022.

The rules state: “The allowance is not paid to support private or parliamentary duties, nor is it used for security purposes. The PDCA is in addition to any constituency office, which they may maintain as an MP. The PDCA is paid from the Cabinet Office vote and administered by the Cabinet Office Finance Team.”

No. Since Harold Wilson arranged for it in 1975, in advance of his own retirement, superannuated premiers have also qualified for a car and driver. They also get round-the-clock security. There is no time qualification, so in theory Liz Truss could receive the full wedge after only 49 days in the job; and it is also not means-tested, so Rishi Sunak, fabulously rich, theoretically could avail himself of it.

David Cameron and Tony Blair have both come under attack for possibly mixing the official and the personal since they left office, although both have denied it.

Somewhat diminished, albeit from a low base. Despite some periodic overheated talk about a return to the leadership of the Conservative Party or a mission to “unite the right” and play some role with Nigel Farage in a merger with Reform UK, the path back to high office looks blocked for Boris. While a dedicated family man, he must surely be getting a bit bored by now. Perhaps his immediate worry is that someone will cut his own, possibly abused, entitlement to welfare benefits in the name of repairing the public finances and restoring integrity to public life?