UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under increasing pressure over how he paid for a renovation of his official London residence.
UK correspondent Matthew Parris told Kathryn Ryan an official investigation has been launched into where money for an extensive refurbishment came from.
Photo: AFP PHOTO / Jessica Taylor /UK Parliament
"It’s a complete catastrophe. Heaven knows how it all started, but it looks very likely that Boris Johnson’s fiancée Carrie Symonds wanted the entire flat, the Downing street flat, redesigned, she complained that it was a John Lewis design and she didn’t like the sofas and all the rest.
"And he went ahead and did it and got the money in the first instance from the Conservative Party [58,000 pounds] on the basis there was a donor Lord Brownlow who would give the money to the Conservative Party earmarked as it were for Boris Johnson’s flat."
Johnson insists he has paid the money back, Parris says.
"But he cannot explain the ruse by which he was going to get the money from the Conservative donor, laundered as it were through the Conservative Party, and he is in quite a lot of trouble."
Johnson was questioned about the matter by Labour leader Kier Starmer today in parliament, Parris says, and his performance was "almost hysterical".
"Nobody really knows where this is going to go next, it’s a small issue, its just the redecoration of a flat, albeit a rather expensive redecoration by a very trendy interior designer whom Carrie Symonds apparently favoured, but it goes to the question of the integrity of the Prime Minister. It would be against the rules if he had received money directly or indirectly from a donor without declaring it properly and that is quite serious."
And there could be more trouble in store for Johnson as his former aide Dominic Cummings is thought to be planning further damaging revelations after the PM accused him of being the source of leaks over Greensill [Capital] enquiry and private texts between him and British billionaire James Dyson.
"Dominic Cummings, having been blamed by the Prime Minister for these leaks, and is probably not the source of them, has now declared all-out war on Boris Johnson. He is leaking madly, he is promising in a select committee meeting that is coming up in a couple of weeks’ time, he’s promising further details. He is clearly set on destroying the man whom he once worked for."
Though the issues themselves are relatively minor, Parris says, the human drama of someone who has once been very close to somebody else, now trying to destroy them is "transfixing the nation at the moment".
Parris also discusses Northern Ireland First Minister Adele Foster calling it quits, an NHS smartphone app being developed for use as a vaccine passport, and self-driving cars have being given the green light by the UK government - with some caveats.
