It appears Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie is a sucker. Or at least was, when she was Johnson’s mistress. And not just because a married man creates a vacancy when he marries his mistress. But, because, as Private Eye reported this week, Carrie’s position as Johnson’s mistress was discovered by the MP who walked into Johnson’s office and saw the future Mrs Johnson fellating the then foreign secretary.
Private Eye wondered – like many – why the Times newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, pulled their original story about Johnson trying to get Carrie, his then mistress, a £100,000 job. As his foreign office chief of staff, no less.
The story – originally told in Lord Ashcroft’s book about the Johnsons – was published in early editions of the Times but was replaced after No 10 became spooked about what else it might possibly contain.
Why the story disappeared, Private Eye explained is because “’Carrie’s people called Rebekah {Brookes, CEO of Murdoch’s News UK empire]’s people’” fearful that “the gruesome sexual detail [about] the PM and his wife REALLY might, er, come out”.
However, by trying to suppress the piece No 10 merely drew global attention to it”, including a “1,000 word dispatch in the New York Times”. About the £100k job, not the other job.
Carrie just ‘having a glass of wine’ with Johnson
Downing Street finally commented on the allegedly “compromising situation” on Friday evening, with the Independent “exclusively” reporting that minister Conor Burns had walked in on the foreign secretary and Carrie (then Symonds) “having a glass of wine together” in 2018.
Burns, we are told, had a “sixth sense” that the relationship was “one to watch”.
Was Burn’s “sixth sense” a heaving in his stomach or retching in his gullet because Private Eye reported “that the MP walked in while Carrie was giving Boris oral sex on the office sofa”?
The Independent’s “exclusive”, that it was just “a glass of wine” that Northern Ireland minister Burns walked in on is No 10’s attempt to kill a story already ignored by the British press.
Ignored Private Eye a distraction
For Peter Jukes, the CEO of ByLine Times its a “shame that the Private Eye piece has diverted us all, in Clinton/Lewinsky style, away from the important allegations about Carriegate”, which he says are:
- Johnson tried to get his then gf [girlfriend] a job for 100k funded by us [the taxpayer]
- The Times censored the story
Except the Private Eye piece hasn’t diverted us all away from that because, incredibly:
3. the Eye’s piece has been all but totally ignored by traditional media.
Apart from LBC radio’s James O’Brien, the silence has been dumbfounding. More so, given social media is flooded with posts under various hashtags.
The Carrie On show is No 10’s deliberate strategy
Broadcaster Tim Walker said he agrees with Jukes and that it’s “vital to keep the focus on what’s important”: “1. Johnson attempted to install his unqualified mistress as his £100k chief of staff at foreign office; and 2. a Murdoch rag caved into pressure to drop the story.”
Today (July 2), Walker suggests the sex part of the story was widely well-known, saying the original Times story dropped it and “I knew about the sex when I broke the story about the [Times] story being dropped.
“Everyone has sex, sometimes in government buildings, but the sex isn’t the story here. Seriously, it’s not,” insisted Walker, who has even opined that he suspects “turning this whole thing into a Carrie On show with jokes about oral sex is part of a deliberate No 10 strategy.”
Granted, the sex is not the big story. However, it remains very much part of the story. It is an important layer. Especially when it concerns the prime minister. Remember, not so long ago an MP was forced to resign his seat for the act of watching sex on his phone in parliament . Not for having actual sex in his parliamentary office.
Johnson surely remembers because it resulted in the biggest ever by-election defeat for the Conservatives in history.
Remember also the days of front page coverage dedicated to Sir Keir Starmer’s beer? Remember the media outcry over Diane Abbot drinking a can of mojito on the Tube? Or the salacious furore around Angela Rayner, where the deputy leader of her majesty’s loyal opposition was subject to media slurs over a story about crossing her legs in parliament?
Where’s the same level of outrage? Where are the front pages and lascivious inside spreads? Why has this story been ignored by a media, many of whom already knew?
It begs the question, are we the biggest suckers of all?
Yes, the Private Eye’s revelation about Johnson and Carrie is about far more than the sex in the foreign secretary’s parliamentary office. It is also about Johnson abusing his power to try and get his mistress a £100,000 job. It is about the censorship of that story by the government. It is about the obedience of the Times to do exactly that. And it all backfiring so spectacularly. So much so that the Times’ censoring of the story was reported on globally.
But, as Private Eye added, “at least no one mentioned blowjobs, so that’s all right then.”
