Boris Johnson’s Eton housemaster warned that he thought himself “free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else”. Decades passed, and Mr Johnson remained cavalier about following the rules. Propriety, even as prime minister, was disgracefully little more than performance. His post-office conduct suggests he still treats norms as optional.
Leaked documents from Mr Johnson’s private office, obtained by the transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets and seen by the Guardian, raise grave questions about his adherence to standards – and whether public money has helped fund his post-premiership business empire. They centre on the public duty costs allowance (PDCA), an allocation meant to support former prime ministers’ public duties, not their profit-making ventures. Mr Johnson has received £182,000 through the scheme since 2022. But the documents suggest his staff has been working not just on public roles but also on global private deals. Mr Johnson calls the allegations “rubbish”.
Five other former prime ministers – Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Liz Truss – have released statements saying they fully comply with rules prohibiting the use of public funds for private business. Rishi Sunak does not claim the allowance. Mr Johnson’s conduct appears to be an outlier. And not for the first time.
This is not just a question of semantics. The ethics watchdog approved Mr Johnson’s 2024 work for a climate consultancy chasing Saudi funds – provided he did not lobby contacts from his time in office. But he’d already made the approach. At about the same time, his taxpayer-funded team was helping him pursue a billion-dollar deal from Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, courting an official he had hosted in No 10. There was no prior approval from the authorities. Mr Johnson didn’t wait for clearance. He was too busy attempting to cash in.
One of the more startling revelations shows Mr Johnson was paid £240,000 by a hedge fund weeks after attending a meeting last March between its boss, Maarten Petermann, and the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro – a man Mr Johnson once denounced as a “dictator of an evil regime”. Mr Johnson secretly hosted Mr Petermann for a two-and-a-half-hour lunch at Chequers just 10 days before leaving office. It raises a serious question: was the outgoing prime minister using his final days, and the trappings of office, to lay the ground for future deals?
Mr Johnson’s defenders say that he has broken no rules. But that, if true, is precisely the problem. Mr Brown is right to call for former prime ministers to have to make public declarations of their business interests, just as sitting MPs and peers must, and for a stronger code on business appointments. It’s worth thinking about extending the current two-year ban on exploiting past official contacts for private gain. The National Audit Office, which scrutinises the PDCA, should investigate Mr Johnson. This is no witch-hunt. It’s about restoring faith in the belief that the conventions of public life cannot be flouted with impunity.
The historian Peter Hennessy once called Mr Johnson the greatest threat to Britain’s “good chap” model – a system built not on law but shared decency. That model is broken. What’s needed is real bite, not the toothless oversight committee that Labour rightly scrapped. The evidence points to high office used for gain. If not highly irregular, it is morally corrupt – and corrosive to public life.
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