When Boris Johnson is not looping the loop in a Typhoon fighter jet, chucking literal or metaphorical hand grenades, or holding a lavish wedding celebration while the rest of the country struggles with the cost-of-living crisis, he is preparing one final outrage before leaving office in disgrace. The former Prime Minister is planning to stuff the House of Lords with, it is reported, dozens of cronies, donors, Brexit cheerleaders and assorted sycophants as a reward for services rendered or yet to come.
The list is said to include the likes of Paul Dacre, who has turned the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday into shameless Johnson mouthpieces; Nadine Dorries, Johnson’s most obsequious apologist in the House of Commons; Ben Elliot, the Conservative party’s co-chairman who arranges access for big donors to Johnson and other senior Tories; Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of a former minister in the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s government who has given the Conservative Party nearly £2m and once paid thousands of pounds to play tennis with Johnson; Allegra Stratton, the former Downing Street spokeswoman caught joking about a Covid lockdown party held in No 10; David Ross, a founder of Carphone Warehouse who helped to arrange a holiday in Mustique for Johnson and his wife; Michael Hintze, a billionaire Tory donor; and Andrew Roberts, the Brexit-supporting historian.
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