LORD Ashcroft is “a bit baffled” by criticism of his forthcoming biography of Carrie Johnson, The Londoner understands.
“She is not a private individual. She is steeped in the Westminster bubble,” a friend of Ashcroft tells us.
Extracts from Ashcroft’s biography, including the claim that Carrie Johnson’s “behaviour” is preventing her husband “from leading Britain as effectively as the voters deserve”, have caused a storm in Westminster in the past few days. Health Secretary Sajid Javid defended her yesterday: “This whole focus on Carrie Johnson in some of these reports, I think it’s very undignified and very unfair”.
But Ashcroft’s friend points out: “Only a fraction of the book has been published so far.”
They added that Johnson “has her own public relations woman funded by the Tory party and she has chosen to get involved in the day-to-day business of the PM running the country, and well as hiring and firing senior Downing Street staff”.
Last week Miriam González Durántez, the wife of former deputy PM Nick Clegg, defended Johnson too, writing on her Substack: “the democratic accountability of the UK Government rests on the shoulders of the Prime Minister, not his wife...A democratically elected Prime Minister who allows non-elected individuals to exert his own political power should resign for breaching the democratic covenant - regardless of whether he has done so out of incompetence, carelessness, laziness, or weakness.”
Boris just wanted to be shop king
BORIS JOHNSON famously wanted to be “world king” when he was a child — but the man himself says his earliest hopes were a little different. “My original ambition was to become a billionaire proprietor of a multiple-brand retail empire,” Johnson tells author Dominic Shelmerdine in a forthcoming second edition of his book My Original Ambition. The PM wanted to be the “Jimmy Goldsmith of my generation”. He adds: “Something went wrong”. You can say that again.
Suki’s enlightened about boy trouble
SUKI WATERHOUSE says her tough experiences help her write songs, including one penned after a trip to Bhutan. Following a break-up, she and a friend went to the South-East Asian country where they met some monks in the remote mountains. “We told them all of our boy-crazy problems,” she explains to Rolling Stone. “And the monks would literally just be p***ing themselves laughing at us like, “What the f*** are you doing being attached to anything? You’re ridiculous.” Perspective.
It’s frustration, frustration for star
KIRSTIE ALLSOPP is fighting her corner after it was reported she said first-time buyers should look around the country for cheaper deals. “Either you think I’m an out-of-touch rich b***h who doesn’t get how hard it is to buy a home in many parts of the UK or you don’t,” the Location, Location, Location presenter wrote online today, claiming her words had been twisted. She’d told a newspaper, “when I bought my first property, going abroad, the easyJet, coffee, gym, Netflix lifestyle didn’t exist”. Today she added: “In the end it’s down to whether you believe in my empathy, understanding & experience or not.”
TV soap gave Labour a g’day
THE under-threat Australian TV soap Neighbours, was partly responsible for Tony Blair’s election, claims a new academic article. “Neighbours’ appeal — community-focused, friendly, classless, unthreatening, a mixed economy and in some ways small ‘c’ conservative — was precisely the platform that Labour needed to convince voters that it failed to reach between 1983 and 1992,” argues Richard Carr, a scholar at Anglia Ruskin University, as spotted by eagle-eyed writer Henry Mance. When good Neighbours become… good electoral assets?
SW1A
MICHAEL HESELTINE may have voted Lib Dem in 2019, but he’s still not one. “I stood in Conservative constituencies with Lib-Dem candidates… virtually every time I won,” he told a live recording of Matt Forde’s podcast. He would tell voters: “You’ve got two liberals standing in this constituency. But I’m going to win.” Uncompromising.
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EVEN Keir Starmer’s card is marked by his Chief Whip. An email to Labour members in Starmer’s Holborn and St Pancras constituency ahead of a (routine) vote for his reselection as an MP sees Sir Alan Campbell assess his leader: “Keir Starmer MP has not rebelled against the whip,” he writes. Well, you would hope not.
