Boris Johnson has sparked fresh accusations of cronyism after choosing the author of a book on his “wit and wisdom” to help oversee the appointment of new peers to the House of Lords.
The journalist Harry Mount, a fellow former Bullingdon Club member and the author of The Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson, will take up the role on the House of Lords appointments commission from 11 September. The body is responsible for vetting all nominations to the Lords. This will include all of Johnson’s requests for peerages to be granted as part of his resignation honours list.
Independent members are appointed for five-year non-renewable terms. The government said the role was widely advertised.
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, said: “This is a display of pure arrogance by Boris Johnson, putting his own leading crony in charge of stopping cronyism in parliament. Instead of tackling the cost of living crisis facing the public, the prime minister is using his last days in office for a final desperate bid to hand out more jobs for the boys.
“Far from promising long overdue change, the Tory continuity candidates offer more of the same sleaze and self-interest that have defined their government for years.”
Downing Street confirmed the appointment of Mount on Johnson’s last Friday in office. He is due to formally resign as prime minister next Tuesday after the announcement of the results of the Tory leadership contest on Monday.
Like Johnson, Mount was a member of all-male Bullingdon Club during his time at the University of Oxford. Mount began writing for the Spectator in 2002 under Johnson’s editorship. He also writes a column for Johnson’s former employers, the Daily Telegraph. He now edits the Oldie magazine.
Mount’s father is Ferdinand Mount, who was an adviser to Margaret Thatcher. He is also second cousin to David Cameron, another former Bullingdon Club member.
A 2007 article about Mount in the New Yorker said: “At Oxford, Mount was tapped for the exclusive Bullingdon Club; he enjoys a certain notoriety for having been rolled down a hill in a portable toilet. ‘It was like coming out of Dracula’s coffin,’ he recalled, at a diner near the Met.”
Johnson has already been criticised for submitting Tory donors to his resignation honours list. Names he has reportedly submitted for a peerage include the Conservative party donor and co-chair Ben Elliot, who had business links to Russian money.
Elliot, who Johnson also appointed to the board of the V&A, has taken Tory donations from Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Vladimir Putin’s former finance minister, and Aquind, a company co-owned by the billionaire Viktor Fedotov.
Other names on the resignation list are thought to include the Daily Mail’s former editor Paul Dacre, who Johnson tried to appoint as chair of the media regulator Ofcom.
The Cabinet Office minister Nicholas True said: “I would like to congratulate Harry Mount on his appointment as an independent member to the House of Lords appointments commission.
“Harry Mount brings a wealth of experience from his career, and has much to offer the House of Lords appointments commission and I wish him the best in his role.”
Johnson also appointed his deputy chief of staff, Baroness Simone Finn, to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, as the Conservative political appointment to the committee.
The ethics committee, chaired by former MI5 boss Lord Jonathan Evans, says it “advises the prime minister on arrangements for upholding ethical standards of conduct across public life in England”.
Evans criticised Johnson in June for only partially accepting recommendations by the committee to strengthen the role of the independent adviser on ministers’ interests, and told MPs in January that “there is at least a carelessness amongst people in government over standards issues, and possibly more than that”.
Finn became Johnson’s deputy chief of staff in February 2021, moving from a role as a non-executive director in the Cabinet Office, to which she was appointed by Michael Gove in May 2020.
Finn hosted Carrie Johnson’s 30th birthday party in March 2018 at her north London home, The Sunday Times reported.
She will join the committee from 21 November 2022 for a renewable three-year term.
In another appointment that the government has claimed is independent, a former Australian minister who helped to establish the country’s heavily criticised programme of offshore asylum processing has been appointed to a board to oversee the UK government’s Rwanda programme.
Alexander Downer, who served as Australia’s minister for foreign affairs and its high commissioner to the UK, is one of eight people appointed to a new monitoring committee to “provide independent assurance” of the government’s scheme.
In a September column for the Daily Mail, Downer backed push-backs at sea and falsely claimed that the “vast majority” of people crossing the Channel were “economic migrants”. He was also appointed by the government this year to help review Border Force.
