PM rows with Crosby over briefings against girlfriend

Boris Johnson rowed with Lynton Crosby over claims he spread rumours about the PM’s girlfriend.

‘They regard her as a barnacle on the boat’: Carrie Symonds outside 10 Dowing Street last week. Picture: Getty Images

Boris Johnson had a spectacular row with the Australian political strategist who helped him win the keys to No 10 about whether he was responsible for spreading damaging rumours about the Prime Minister’s girlfriend.

Mr Johnson had an explosive telephone call with Lynton Crosby in which he questioned him about the origins of newspaper claims that Carrie Symonds quit her job at Tory party HQ just months after being accused of abusing her expenses.

Yesterday, friends of the election guru denied he had ever briefed against Ms Symonds, 31, who moved into Downing Street with Mr Johnson last week.

A party insider claimed the heated exchange between Mr Johnson and Sir Lynton followed reports in a newspaper that Ms ­Symonds had been asked to leave her £80,000-a-year post as director of communications after party chiefs said her performance was poor. “Lynton didn’t like the accusatorial line of questioning taken by Johnson and slammed the phone down,” the source said.

Boris Johnson has moved Carrie Symonds into No. 10. Picture: AFP.

Another source said: “Symonds believes Lynton and his cronies have been dripping poison about her in her boyfriend’s ear. They regard her as a barnacle on the boat and have been questioning Boris’s judgment about whether it was a good idea for him to be flaunting their relationship when he was running to be prime minister.”

Opinion in senior party circles is sharply divided over her suitability to be Downing Street’s “first lady”. Mr Johnson is not yet div­orced from his second wife, ­Marina Wheeler, with whom he has four children. The issue surfaced last month when police were called to Ms Symonds’s flat in southeast London after neighbours heard her and Mr Johnson having a furious row.

Sources accused Ms Symonds of costing the party thousands in unauthorised expenses, booking cabs in the names of junior staff to disguise the fact they were for her and using taxis to travel home and to meet friends when off duty.

They claim Mick Davis, the party’s chief executive at the time, tried several times to remove Ms Symonds but was rebuffed after protests by her allies in the party. Eventually, he asked her to resign.

Friends of Ms Symonds claim she was ousted for taking time off last year to campaign against the decision to grant early parole to black-cab rapist John Worboys. She had been drugged by him in 2007, when she was 19.

A source close to Sir Lynton described claims of a row as “nonsense” and said the pair had spoken “amicably” on Saturday and had been in touch “frequently” since Johnson was elected leader. Although he had no role in the campaign, it is understood the two spoke daily.

The Sunday Times