Forget the Trumps, here come the Johnsons

Boris Johnson’s clan, with exes and half-siblings, has all the trappings of a modern family.

Boris Johnson with girlfriend Carrie Symonds.

In the Westminster bubble Boris Johnson’s girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, is already being referred to as “Britain’s new first lady”.

Since taking up with the Tory frontrunner last year she has been jokingly referred to as “Flotus” by friends and even some senior party insiders. The term usually refers to Melania Trump, first lady of the US.

This may prove apt. For if Johnson, who turns 55 tomorrow, does triumph next month and becomes prime minister, Britain will have its first fully fledged first family — close-knit but with the modern trappings of exes and half-siblings, in the Trumpian mould.

The Johnson clan: (From L) Jo, 47, brother; Rachel, 53, sister; Carrie Symonds, 31, girlfriend; Boris, 54; Stanley, 78, father; Marina Wheeler, 55, estranged wife; Leo, 51, brother

Bar a few exceptions — such as Cherie Blair’s eccentric half-sister Lauren Booth and John Major’s brother Terry Major-Ball, who briefly became a media darling — most relatives of British prime ministers have been background figures. Enter stage right the Johnsons. No one could claim the platinum-plumed clan (plus the token brunette brother Leo) hides its light under a bushel.

The question after Trump’s state visit to the UK — with his four adult children — is how many of the Johnson family will make the return visit to the US, which a source close to the White House says could happen this northern summer: “It’s a foregone conclusion that Johnson will be invited to the Oval Office as soon as he becomes PM.”

Johnson on the hustings with estranged wife Marina Wheeler in 2015. There is speculation that Johnson is trying for a ‘quickie’ divorce within weeks. Picture: AFP

Boris (christened Alexander Boris de Pfeffel) has been dubbed the “mini Trump across the Channel” by the French newspaper Le Monde. Like the US President — who suffers from bathmophobia, a fear of slopes and stairs, and an aversion to germs — Boris has his own hang-ups. In her 2011 book Just Boris, Sonia Purnell suggested he suffered from “tramp dread”, a fear of descending into poverty, and that this motivates his “ceaseless drive to inflate the collective Johnsonian bank balance”.

The arrival of Symonds — dubbed “Apples” because of her rosy cheeks — means that a wedding might be on the cards. It would be No 10’s first divorce and wedding since the 18th century, when the Duke of Grafton ended his marriage to Anne FitzRoy and wed Elizabeth Wrottesley.

There is speculation that Johnson is trying for a “quickie” divorce within weeks from his second wife, Marina Wheeler, the mother of four of his children — Lara, Theodore, Cassia and Milo — and so could enter Downing Street as a double divorcee.

He has had a makeover since starting a relationship with Symonds, who calls him Bozzie Bear. As well as getting him to cut down on alcohol and meat (although he told The Sunday Times last week that he could not hack veganism because he missed cheese too much), Symonds has also encouraged him to take up yoga.

His relations with Wheeler are believed to have thawed. A source in the Johnson camp even claims that she is offering political advice to Boris — although this was played down by party insiders.

Johnson’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds.

The patriarch of the Johnson clan is the twice-married Stanley. According to friends, the characters of Boris and Stanley have melded so much that they seem like clones. Stanley has even been mistaken for Boris, much to the latter’s annoyance.

“I’m 20 years younger, for God’s sake. Can’t you tell?” Boris is said to have once exclaimed.

Stanley, who appeared on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!, is said to have a “chronic, bottomless need for attention … He’ll do all sorts of silly things,” said an acquaintance.

“He’ll happily be the one standing on his head with a banana ­between his toes.”

Conservative MP Jo Johnson, and father Stanley Johnson sit in the audience of Boris’ Conservative Party leadership campaign launch.Picture: AFP.

Rachel Johnson, the second-eldest child of Stanley and his first wife, the artist Charlotte Wahl, is a journalist and has been described as “the peacemaker”. She was a candidate for Change UK in the EU elections but has nonetheless tried to patch up family relations over Brexit.

There has been some tension between Jo and Leo — who both backed “Remain” in 2016 — and Boris, who effectively led the “Leave” campaign. Leo, who is politically liberal, is a broadcaster and “megatrends” expert, popular at London parties. “There’s a quiet, warm side to Boris that comes out only to friends; Leo oozes it to everyone,” said a friend.

Journalist Rachel Johnson writes for The Times.

Jo, the MP for Orpington, resembles Boris’s slimmer body double. Deemed the sensible one, he once quipped: “There was no point trying to be the loud one.” Married to the Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman, who broke the Windrush scandal, Jo once told a friend that his children were more likely to be Corbynistas than Conservatives.

The question is whether Jo — who resigned from a ministerial position to support a second referendum last year but has been quiet of late — would accept a job in his brother’s cabinet.

There are also half-siblings. After divorcing in the 1980s, Stanley had two children, Julia and Maximilian, with his wife Jennifer Kidd. Max is a Hong Kong-based businessman who has worked at Goldman Sachs.

When he was 15 Stanley took Max to the Amazon, where they swam with piranhas. Max wed his Brazilian girlfriend, Gabriela Maia, in Indonesia last year.

Julia, married to a financier, Calum Gray, is an author and singer-songwriter. She has no interest in a career in politics: “I have steered clear of any professional comparisons with my xanthic-haired, Roman-nosed, Latin-spouting relations”.

The Sunday Times