4 Thursday January 13 2022 | the timestimes2
£840 a roll in a grandiose decorating
bill that at moments made deadly PR
for Johnson, in the manner of Oscar
Wilde’s alleged dying words on his
garish wall coverings: “Either this
wallpaper goes or I will.”
On those gilded walls of their flat,
next to the splodged handprints of
Wilfred, hangs the soulful artwork of
Johnson’s mother, Charlotte Wahl,
who died in September last year, the
same year Carrie had a miscarriage.
Looking out at the dusky London
skyline at the back of the flat, Johnson
would see through the windows the
Downing Street garden, home to the
party for staff held in May 2020, just
weeks after — a catch-up for those
who missed an episode — Johnson
was face down in intensive care given
a 50:50 chance of life, and Wilfred, his
sixth child according to most unofficial
counts, was born.
He may see that his chaos has
tumbled out onto even these peaceful
lawns. Who would guess that it would
be Johnson’s very own back garden
that would become a crime scene
where he might be trapped at last?
But if Johnson had the time or
silence to reflect on anything it would
be this very symbol. Of course
Johnson’s weakness is his own
backyard because for him the personal
is extraordinarily political, in that
Johnson’s character, and by extension
his home life, matters unduly to his
appeal or lack of it.
We the voting public were quite
tolerant of his history of (figuratively)
creeping out the back door of his
mistresses’ homes; however many
are raging at the idea of him walkingout of his own back door to an illegal
party during lockdown, as well as
blustering and flustering to conceal
the fact.
“Keeping up with the Johnsons”
takes on a double meaning now: not
just their or, perhaps more accurately,
her, taste for the more aspirationally
luxurious in decor, clothes and
holidays — their post-election holiday
to Mustique was the source of yet
another parliamentary investigation
over funding — but also their drama.
Allegra Stratton was hired as a press
secretary by Johnson, with the
encouragement of Carrie, as part of a
high-stakes coup against Dominic
Cummings, Boris’s eccentric Svengali.
Stratton never had time to perform
her role before being pushed aside,
and in December Stratton she resigned
from government after yet another
crisis-management prime minister’s
questions speech from Johnson.
Stratton was one of the scapegoats
for the several illicit lockdown parties
held inside Downing Street, and her
departure could have been the
Johnsons’ telenovela Christmas finale.
Yet the very next day the Johnsons
topped it, announcing that their
daughter, Romy, had just been born.
I remember being a political
reporter when the Blairs had a baby
while in Downing Street, and this one
event seemed to fill the headlines for
months. For the fast-paced Johnsons it
made a day of news before it was
superseded. Someone remarked on
Twitter that it must be “exhausting” to
be Carrie and Boris.
Johnson told an interviewer from
The Atlantic magazine that he had justM
ost biographies of
national leaders
are contained in
overlong and
underread books;
dull, policy-rich
tomes. That is
not the case with
Boris Johnson. To keep up with the
904 intense days since he took power
would not be possible in plodding
book form.
It would need the schlocky
melodrama of a Mexican telenovela,
full of almost unbelievable plot twists
of personal drama and deception: a
secret, third, wedding; two babies; one
near-death; and a funeral. This, plus a
garish confusion of fact and fiction,
and nearly all staged in the domestic
rooms of Downing Street.
Last night Johnson returned to his
flat and family home above 11
Downing Street, filled with reminders
of the many exhausting storylines
since he arrived, with Carrie Symonds,
then his girlfriend, here at this house
and in office. This is not a place for
statesmanlike sober reflection on adisastrous day apologising to the
nation at prime minister’s questions
— “I know the rage they feel with
me” — to grab fast-failing support
from public and party, and to wonder
how long he, at 57, has left before he
packs up their expensive furniture
and leaves. This is a property
filled, because it is filled with the
Johnsons, with chaotic energy.
It is strewn with the usual noisy
bedlam surrounding a newborn baby,
his daughter Romy, just a month out
of hospital. Boris himself was rushed
to hospital in an ambulance from this
flat in April 2020, with a life-
threatening case of Covid-19, less than
a month before Romy’s older brother,
Wilfred, now a fizzing, wildly curly-
haired blond toddler, was born.
Here are the rooms where a staffer
is reported to have found Carrie in
tears over the near-death of her
unborn baby’s father. The stairs that
Carrie, recovering from childbirth,
trudged down to serve the invalid
Boris his food, before returning to look
after tiny Wilfred. The stairs, where
Carrie was so depleted she had to sit
down on them to regain energy for the
walk back up.
Even the dog, Dilyn, adopted by
Carrie a few months after she moved
in, is a kind of spirit animal of its male
master, a scruffy, libidinous survivor,
a Jack Russell cross saved from
euthanasia, dressed occasionally in a
Union Jack coat, who has a reputation
for urinating on or attempting to mate
with objects in his path.
Even the sumptuous fresh wallpaper
on the walls may seem to close in on
Johnson. It was ordered by Carrie atBoris Johnson and
Carrie Symonds, then his
girlfriend, watching the
2019 election resultsCarrie and Boris on their
wedding day in May 2021. Top:
with baby Wilfred and Dilyn
the dog in Scotland in 2020The Boris and Carrie show: 904
Bedlam, babies and
a backyard party —
life at No 10 is now
an exhausting
farce, reports
Helen Rumbelow
It’s like a
schlocky
telenovela,
full of plot
twists of
personal
drama