Here’s to you Mrs Johnson
Inside 10 Downing Street, the elegant Westminster townhouse that serves as the heart of Britain’s government, staffers were crisis-fighting on all fronts. COVID was raging, a painstakingly negotiated Brexit deal was unravelling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had just quit over a personality clash, and from down the corridor came a cry of despair: “She’s completely out of control. It’s costing me tens of thousands. I can’t afford it”.
The voice – unmistakable in its tenor and plumminess – belonged to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose trademark ebullience seemed to have suddenly deserted him. Less than a year earlier, Boris, 57, had stormed to a landslide election victory and moved into the spacious prime-ministerial apartment with his glamorous fiancée, 33-year-old Carrie Symonds, the daughter of a well-connected PR executive.
According to aides, Carrie was horrified by the drab décor and “department store” furnishings of the couple’s new quarters, and after demanding a complete refurbishment went off to consult London’s most fashionable interior designer, Lulu Lytle. It was when the gold-inlaid wallpaper at $1500-a-roll started going up that Boris allegedly had his meltdown.
The finished job featured stripped wood floors, candlelit nooks and brightly coloured natural fabrics that
