Downing St has for the third time in five days put out a statement that is irrelevant to the central question, which is how long @BorisJohnson borrowed tens of thousands of pounds to pay for redecorating and refurbishing his Downing St home. This is all increasingly...
weird. I asked Downing St why they bothered to put it out and was told “because we have”. Here is the statement (again). ‘A No 10 spokesperson said: “Any costs of wider refurbishment this year beyond...
those provided for by the annual allowance have been met by the Prime Minister personally. Conservative Party funds are not being used for this.”’ As I said, this ducks the only important questions which are how long the PM borrowed from the Tory party, was it an
interest free loan, how much was it, which donor or donors funded the Tory party, and so on?

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More from @Peston

28 Apr
I understand that @BorisJohnson's first conversations about having the Downing Street flat funded by donors were as long ago as February 2020. At the time Ben Elliot, joint chairman of the party suggested the PM borrow to pay the costs. The PM then came up with the idea...
of a blind trust, again funded by donors. But the Cabinet Office could not sort the proprieties. According to an email leaked to the Daily Mail, the Tory donor Lord Brownlow then contributed £58,000 "to cover the payments the party has already made on behalf of the soon...
to be formed 'Downing Street Trust'" - which was never formed. The Tory Party had seemingly already paid back the Cabinet Office for the decorating bills it had paid on the PM's behalf. And the PM has now paid back the Tory Party. We don't know when the...
Read 6 tweets
28 Apr
.@DUPleader will inevitably resign soon, in the face of the coup against her. What happens next will have huge significance in respect of Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK - because Arlene Foster made the judgement (which feels right) that the way to keep the DUP a...
credible political force was to move it to the centre ground, especially on social issues, whereas those who oppose her do so on the grounds of religious fundamentalism. Or to put it another way, the DUP is at a momentous cross roads. Will it choose a new leader that will...
return NI’s biggest unionist party to religious sectarianism, and arguably thereby drive large numbers of unaligned voters to Sinn Fein, or will the new leader continue Foster’s drive to reposition the DUP as a centrist party of unionism? What happens matters not only to...
Read 4 tweets
26 Apr
I'm understand CCHQ (Tory Party) made payment to the Cabinet Office to cover initial costs of refurbishing the PM's home in Downing Street, and the PM is now repaying CCHQ. There is an audit trail. Cabinet Sec Simon Case knows about it. Which is presumably why he told MPs...
today that he would do a report on the propriety of how the decoration and furnishing was funded. This is breaking news and I will update
Downing Street says to me - again - that the PM has now paid for the costs of the refurbishment. But there was a loan to him from the Tory Party. And I assume that loan will now have to be declared by him. You decide whether it was appropriate for his party to give...
Read 6 tweets
14 Apr
.@BorisJohnson's deputy chief of staff, Baroness [Simone] Finn, has retained her shareholding of between 25% and 50% in Francis Maude Associates, a consultancy that advises governments, although she has resigned as a director. When I asked Downing Street about this, a...
spokesman said: “Baroness Finn has declared all her relevant interests to the House of Lords, and in addition, complied with the Cabinet Office requirements for special advisers to declare outside interests.The Cabinet Office has a formal process to avoid...
conflicts of interest arising from such declared interests.” All I would point out is that perceived conflicts of interests can be as damaging for confidence in government as actual conflicts of interest. And if Francis Maude Associates takes on new business with this...
Read 5 tweets
16 Mar
There is an an enormous amount of noise around the apparent statement in the government's "Integrated Review" that the government is increasing its stockpile of nuclear warheads by more than a third. But a close reading of what it says shows NO SUCH commitment at all...
What the document says is "in 2010 the Government stated an intent to reduce our overall nuclear warhead stockpile ceiling from not more than 225 to not more than 180 by the mid-2020s. However, in recognition of the evolving security environment, including the...
developing range of technological and doctrinal threats, this is no longer possible, and the UK will move to an overall nuclear weapon stockpile of no more than 260 warheads". To be clear, the current stockpile of nuclear weapons is unknown. It is a state secret. But whatever...
Read 6 tweets
19 Feb
According to a source, the departure of Oliver Lewis - or “Sonic” - from Downing St was because “Carrie wants [Henry] Newman running the Union” - ie the unit charged with keeping Scotland in the UK, which was Lewis’s job. This shows not that Carrie Symonds is necessarily...
calling the shots. In practice these are the PM’s decisions. But this framing of what happened shows that the tensions within Downing Street that led to the departures of Cummings and Cain have not gone away. I am hearing other Downing St aides are also feeling uneasy with...
the new order. And it is widely believed that the unexpected decision to put David Frost in the cabinet was a pre-emptive move to keep him.
Read 6 tweets

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