Boris Johnson to live with girlfriend in Downing Street

Boris Johnson’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds will live with him in Downing Street it was confirmed yesterday.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's girlfriend Carrie Symonds in Downing Street. Picture: Getty Images.

Boris Johnson’s girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, will live with him in Downing Street, it was confirmed yesterday.

Taxpayers will not have to foot the couple’s furniture bill despite reports that Mr Johnson had asked for a new bed.

Ms Symonds was part of the delegation waiting outside No 10 when Mr Johnson arrived for the first time as Prime Minister last week. Although she was not at his side as he walked through the door, she did spend part of the weekend with him at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country residence.

Downing Street confirmed that Mr Johnson, 55, was moving into the property yesterday. A spokesman said Ms Symonds, 31, would be living with him, making them the first unmarried couple to reside there officially.

Mr Johnson’s living quarters would be furnished at “no cost to the taxpayer”, the spokesman said. Reports earlier this month had suggested the new Prime Minister had told officials that he would need furniture for his new residence.

Mr Johnson is in the process of divorcing his wife of 25 years, lawyer Marina Wheeler, 54, with whom he has four children.

He and Ms Symonds will live in the four-bedroom flat above No 11 Downing Street and Sajid Javid, the Chancellor, will take the two-bedroom property above No 10.

Downing Street also indicated that Ms Symonds, a former head of communications for the Conservative Party, would not have any publicly funded staff. The couple previously lived at Ms Symonds’s flat in Camberwell, south London. They moved out after a late-night row between them was recorded by one of their neighbours last month.

Friends of Ms Symonds have described her as a tremendous support to Mr Johnson. She is expected to stay in her job campaigning for cleaner oceans for an organisation run by Bloomberg and to continue advocating on behalf of issues close to her heart, including animal welfare.

At the weekend, she tweeted a newspaper story about British trophy hunters who pay £3000 ($5275) to slaughter 100 puffins at a time. She said when she had first seen the birds, they were “smaller than I expected” with “amazing rainbow bills”. She added: “Just can’t understand why anyone would want to shoot them. Mad.”

The Times