Love affairs, Russians and Brexit: what is Boris Johnson hiding?
- UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces renewed questions about his links to a US businesswoman who claims ‘very special relationship’ with him
- Questions also mount over what influence Russia may have had on the 2016 Brexit referendum
If Boris Johnson was still a newspaper columnist, he may have mocked a prime minister outed as a serial philanderer with links to the Kremlin.
The Queen’s highest official, he also may have quipped, has more wives than the King of Swaziland or more lovers than a 1970s rock star on crack, or words to that effect.
He may have lapped up allegations that the prime minister, in his former role of foreign secretary attended “bunga bunga” parties in the Italian chateau of a former senior KGB operative, and demanded he be charged with high treason, then strung up on the Tower of London for colluding with spies to break up the European Union.
Yet as reports about the private affairs of the UK’s prime minister continue to mount, driven largely by a handful of the country’s top investigative reporters, observers are baffled by the lack of importance given to Johnson’s serial philandering by much of the country’s media.
With less than a month to go until the next general election, there seems little evidence that the skeletons that continue to tumble out of Johnson’s cupboard are doing him any harm in the opinion polls. The latest polls are still giving the Conservatives a double-digit lead over their nearest rival, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.
“What we find hard to believe is that the English people are accepting this behaviour for a prime minister,” said one senior London-based Asian diplomat.
