Boris Johnson accepts another £10,000 in accommodation from Tory donor
Boris Johnson has accepted another £10,000 of accommodation from the Bamford family, taking their contributions to his lifestyle to almost £50,000 since he resigned as Conservative leader.
The former prime minister registered the additional gift from Lady Carole Bamford, for “concessionary use of accommodation for me and my family in October”.
She had previously contributed £10,000 for the Johnson family’s accommodation in September, plus an additional £3,500 for different accommodation that month.
Johnson accepted the gifts despite part-owning three other homes, in Oxfordshire, London and Somerset. The Bamford family also contributed more than £23,800 towards the Johnsons’ wedding celebrations over the summer.
In July, Bamford hosted Boris and Carrie Johnson as they celebrated their wedding, which had taken place during lockdown, in the grounds of his 18th-century mansion, Daylesford House in the Cotswolds.
Johnson had abandoned plans, after his resignation as prime minister, to hold the celebration at the PM’s official country residence, Chequers, in Buckinghamshire. The “festival-esque” celebration is said to have included a steel band, rum punch, Abba songs and a conga.
Lord Anthony Bamford, a pro-Brexit Conservative peer who is chair of JCB, the construction equipment manufacturer, has been a generous Tory donor for decades. The billionaire entrepreneur supported Johnson’s successful leadership bid in 2019, and has given more than £10m in donations and gifts to the party since 2001.
Johnson has begun making his own money on the side after leaving office, with a £130,000 speech to the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers in Colorado, during which he joked about sharing the French president, Emmanuel Macron’s “fancy” wine with Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor. He is also due to give a speech at a cryptocurrency conference in December.
The latest register of MPs’ interests data, published this week, shows Liz Truss declaring £16,500-worth of transport during her leadership campaign from a company called Big Ben Films, after previously taking £8,000 from Bamford. She was given more than £500,000 in total for her campaign that led to her short-lived time as prime minister.
It also reveals that Sajid Javid, the former chancellor, has established a company as a vehicle for his income, saying its revenue would be used to “pay employees, maintain my ongoing involvement in public life and support my charitable work”, as well as paying him £20,000 a month for speaking engagements.
The company received £36,000 from Javid’s former employer, Deutsche Bank, for a speech to its clients in October.
