Covid made him do it. If it hadn’t been for Covid the prime minister would not have been compelled, absolutely forced by the urgency of the situation, to text privately on a tax issue with the distinguished vacuum cleaner magnate James Dyson.
There was no time to summon a civil servant and put the manufacturer on speaker phone, not 30 seconds in which to text him a link to the UK’s ministerial code. Personal assurances to valued friends are actually, we learn, what true leadership looks like. “I make no apology at all,” Johnson said, “for shifting heaven and Earth…”
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, would soon clarify – perhaps to allay fears among party allies that their special treatment was at risk – that the Covid bit was actually irrelevant, that the ministerial code remains fully optional. “I think that in a modern democracy it’s very good that people actually can have direct access to ministers and people who are taking responsibility.”
Should the regulations, then, be updated? Simply for the avoidance of doubt. Speedily revised legislation could, in deference to those who, like Johnson on a moralising Cummings, “don’t give a monkey’s” about procedure, enshrine the more convenient system that has informally evolved under Cameron and Johnson to more closely resemble, say, Hungary’s.
Although it’s designedly impossible for outsiders to quantify the democratic consequences when favourites are repeatedly, national emergency or not, granted informal access – maybe after “private drinks” – to preferential treatment, we have Johnson himself to thank for an illustration of how, in practice, this might work. From Jennifer Arcuri’s recent account of their affair, 2012-16, we know Covid is not the first cause in which a diligently texting Johnson has moved heaven and Earth. Or Earth, anyway.
Still relatively overlooked, however, are the 240 equally fascinating (if much-redacted) pages resulting from a FOI request to the Greater London Authority, seemingly all that survived the unfortunate (official) erasure of Johnson’s mailbox. By early 2013, these records indicate, County Hall had been asked if Arcuri really was “in charge of the Mayor’s digital communications”. Officials were soon pleading: “Please can you refrain from going via the Mayor direct” and struggling with announcements awarding Johnson a key role in Arcuri’s company events. “Please feel free to list the Mayor as a speaker on the website but please can you remove him as a partner or sponsor.”
By 2014: “All, Jennifer Acuri [sic] of Innotech is advertising that the Mayor is attending her summit, which I am pretty sure he is not. She did this last year too. Is there someone in the GLA whose job it is to stop false advertising in the Mayor’s name, such as this?” But the mayor did attend; shortly, she would join his delegation, even though her new company Playbox was ostensibly ineligible, on a business trip to Singapore and Malaysia. It was one of three (out of a possible 15) trade missions the mayor attended; Arcuri also appeared at the other two.
Added to the findings of the Independent Office for Police Conduct (completed, alas, before Arcuri confirmed the affair), this abundant material could not make clearer the economic value of a new, more transparently secretive Kwarteng code of conduct. As for public employees, some retraining might prepare them to serve more submissively the interests of influential favourites whose claims to public support, or even to respect, might appear non-existent. Young Arcuri could become haughty when questioned about her independently concocted plans: “I have been planning this for a few months now. The Mayor is very aware of this and has agreed to do it.”
City Hall tried being haughty back. “Sadly the Mayor is unable to attend the Google Hangout,” it ventured, once. “Perhaps we could discuss alternative representation?” No chance. Impending Arcuri-Johnson fixtures kept coming, along with accompanying requests for City Hall’s approval of glowing mayoral quotes, of mayor-embellished promotional material, even of a Johnson-Arcuri double act, all composed by the mayor’s lover. By way of a sample:
“Jennifer Arcuri: (to Boris Johnson): ‘Would you like to join us to hang out with our very special guests from across the pond…’
Boris Johnson: ‘Yes of course. I am happy to hang out.’
Jennifer Arcuri: ‘Digital LA, San Francisco, it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you today one of the greatest leader [sic] London has ever had, the Mayor of London Mr Boris Johnson.’”
The scene concludes: “Mayor BORIS JOHSNON [sic] and JENNIFER ARCURI exit to press conference in back.”
In one of several treasurably dry asides, a functionary emails that they have amended Arcuri’s work – “much less odd”.
Though its 2020 report found that certain official invitations and grants were not indicative of criminal misconduct, the IOPC discovered that the Arcuri-Johnson relationship did influence officials. But as existing evidence makes clear, and the pending GLA investigation will doubtless corroborate, the approval of anyone subordinate to Johnson was something that Arcuri, empowered by occasional letters and his high opinion (“I love your body, and your face, and your breasts, but you are a very clever woman” etc), could live without. “Boris”, she informed officials, was her “point of contact”. To her way of thinking, her summits had been “run with the mayor of London”.
As for Johnson, a GLA associate wrote, he’d attended one event “as a favour to her. His officials were not happy about him doing so, but he had apparently promised her some time ago.” Via such concealed direct access, including a key point of contact in the mayor’s marital home, did City Hall effectively become a PR for an obscure events company.
Now a similar pattern, writ larger, emerges in Downing Street. There is no evidence, it’s true, of Johnson pursuing a romantic interest in the statuesque hair-dryer billionaire. At a guess, Dyson’s a bit on the mature side. But that’s the trouble when messages come and go, assurances are personal and accountability is resented – how do you ever know?
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
