Boris was ‘skint’ in office – now he’ll earn millions
Books, speeches, big business, TV? The PM likes to spend but he won’t be short of offers
When she joined the Brussels bureau of the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph in the early 1990s, Sonia Purnell was taken aside for a warning.
“‘When Boris Johnson comes asking for you to lend him £50, don’t do it’,” she was told. “‘You won’t get it back’. And sure enough, he did!”
At the time, he was paid considerably more than she was, although she claims he never bought her a round. “They rented a huge house for him. He claimed enormous expenses,” recalls Purnell, who later became one of Johnson’s early biographers.
“He likes money. He’s alive to money. But he likes it in his bank account rather than spreading it around.”
Johnson remains a financial enigma. He is a multimillionaire, but tells friends he is “broke”. His salary as British prime minister alone places him within the top 1 per cent of earners, yet his premiership has been dogged by financial scandal. In mid-2019, before he moved into Downing Street, he was earning up to £120,000 ($210,542) a speech, yet his Toyota Previa was littered with coffee cups and Ikea bags.
How can the Prime Minister be short of money? Growing up, the Johnsons were comfortably middle class. He married Marina Wheeler in 1993, who became a rich barrister herself. Together, with his editorship of The Spectator, shadow cabinet roles and, later, his £275,000 Telegraph column, the couple had enough money to buy several properties.
These include a north London home in Furlong Road, Islington, bought for £470,000 in March 1999 and sold for £1.2m in May 2009. Because of the profit made on the property, Johnson – still a US citizen at that point, thanks to being born in New York – was obliged to pay what he called an “outrageous” capital gains tax bill. He renounced his citizenship in 2016.
The couple bought another Islington townhouse for £1.9m in 2005, at which he announced his support for Brexit in 2016. In 2003 they bought a four-bedroom detached house in Thame, Oxfordshire, complete with tennis court and pool, for £640,000, shortly after he became MP for Henley. The property is now worth at least £1.2m.
When he and Wheeler divorced, they sold the Islington house for £3.35m – £400,000 below the asking price – in November 2019.
He and his third wife, Carrie, then bought a £1.2m townhouse in Camberwell, south London. Since early last year, both this and the Thame house have been let for an estimated total of about £8000 a month – about £96,000 a year – although Wheeler may be entitled to a share of the Oxfordshire rent.
The truth is that being in government has been tough on Johnson’s finances. In 2019 his income, according to the parliamentary register of interests, was £624,000, most of which was made before becoming Prime Minister in July. This was largely thanks to lucrative speaking gigs, one of which netted him £123,000 in March 2019.
Yet since becoming Prime Minister, his income has plummeted to his prime minister’s salary of £164,080, well below the £300,000 a year he has told friends he needs to keep his head above water, plus a smattering of book royalties. This does not include rental income, which does not have to be declared in full.
Since taking office, there is little evidence of Johnson being willing, or able, to cut back. His four children with Wheeler have left full-time education but he has to pay maintenance for his daughter with the art dealer Helen Macintyre, born in 2009. Last year it was also claimed that Tory donors were asked to chip in for a nanny for toddler Wilfred.
Lady Bamford, wife of the Tory donor Lord Bamford, contributed some funds towards the £27,000 cost of food and drink from Daylesford organic farm shops.
Yet by far the biggest expense of his tenure was the £200,000 Downing Street flat refurbishment, which receipts show included £2250 on “gold” wallpaper courtesy of the designer Lulu Lytle (nicknamed “Lulu A Lot"). Prime ministers are granted just £30,000 a year to spend on living quarters; it later emerged that the donor Lord Brownlow had paid a total of about £112,000 towards the refurbishment. “I am afraid parts of our flat are still a bit of a tip,” Johnson had texted him.
When he leaves office, Johnson’s parliamentary pay will fall to his MP’s salary of £84,144 – yet not before he receives three months’ severance payment, expected to total £18,860.
It will probably not be feasible to return to his and Carrie’s flat in Camberwell. Ex-prime ministers receive round-the-clock security; besides, it and the Oxfordshire property have tenants. Johnson may be forced to rent somewhere in London temporarily. He will also lose the privilege of ministerial cars, although the condition of Johnson’s previous automobiles suggest he will not be splashing out.
There may soon be nursery and then school fees to pay for Wilfred, aged two, and Romy, aged seven months. Carrie’s alma mater, the Godolphin and Latymer School, in Hammersmith, charges nearly £24,000 a year.
These expenses may add up. Yet if previous British prime ministers are anything to go by, Johnson has little to worry about. Each one since Sir John Major has become a multi-millionaire. Some estimate Tony Blair’s net worth is close to £100m.
There are several go-to options for former leaders. The obvious one is for Johnson to rejoin the speaking circuit, which netted him £450,000 in the year before he became PM. His fee will have risen dramatically since. Theresa May, not known for her rousing rhetoric, has earned £2.5m in speeches.
Guests will not be scrutinising his record in power. Giles Edwards is the author of The Ex Men, a book about what happens to British prime ministers when they retire. “The key factor in speakers is the role they had, not necessarily how they fulfilled it. What guests want to hear is the words of a former leader of a major economy, a security council member and nuclear power. They’ll want to hear about Brexit, Covid, and Ukraine.”
He could also join the boards of multinational companies, using his contacts book and prestige to secure contracts and clients.
There will be books. Winston Churchill, who was in enormous debts during the 1930s, was able to leave office in 1945 a rich man thanks partly to the equivalent of a multimillion-pound book deal based on his account of the war. Johnson is no war hero, but his three-year term has spanned some of the most chaotic events of British history. David Cameron signed an £800,000 book deal for his memoirs; a Johnson equivalent would easily make millions. At some point, he also needs to finish his Shakespeare biography, which has been several years in the works.
Some suggested he may try again as PM. “I certainly wouldn’t rule it out,” his biographer Andrew Gimson, told Times Radio last week. “He does regard politics as a higher calling than journalism.”
Others feel he should aim bigger. Mark Borkowski is one of the country’s leading PR experts. “If you say ‘Boris’ to a villager in Turkmenistan, they’ll know who he is. Forget the books and the columns – he could accelerate past that. I dare say he’ll start getting calls over the next couple of weeks, particularly from America.
“Boris is a brand. He’s a celebrity. He’s a performer. I dare say he could pull off a TV job for a global network.”
Given Johnson’s stints on the BBC’s Have I Got News For You, perhaps he will follow in Sir Harold Wilson’s footsteps: the former Labour PM hosted the talk show Friday Night, Saturday Morning in 1979, although he performed badly and was removed after two episodes.
“If he can get the right agent, preferably in America, you can add noughts to whatever Tony Blair has earned,” said Borkowski. Johnson’s finances will be just fine – as long as he steers clear of politics.
THE SUNDAY TIMES
More Coverage
Peru’s port takes centre stage in a reshuffling of the world order
Peru will it will take centre stage next month in a revolution of the world order.
Georgia elections ‘a Russian special op’
The President of Georgia has urged nationwide protests against her own government after it claimed victory in a vote she said was rigged by a Russian ‘special operation’.