Journalist tells of Boris’ groping
‘‘I’m seated on Johnson’s right; on his left is a young woman I know,’’ she writes. ‘‘More wine is poured; more wine is drunk. Under the table I feel Johnson’s hand on my thigh. He gives it a squeeze. His hand is high up my leg and he has enough inner flesh beneath his fingers to make me sit suddenly upright.
‘‘My mother always said: ‘Wear a badge to the cinema with which to stab wandering hands’. But this is work, so I am silent.’’
After the lunch, which was in the magazine’s top-floor dining room overlooking the garden, the two women speculate: ‘‘Were the squeezes simultaneous? For balance? Was he hedging?’’
They also discussed how Johnson had referred during the lunch to Marina Wheeler, to whom he was married at the time, as his ‘‘current wife’’ – which led the pair to ‘‘grimace’’, according to Edwardes. Wheeler, who filed for divorce last September after 25 years of marriage, was Johnson’s second wife. The couple married in 1993, less than two weeks after his divorce from Allegra Mostynowen came through.
The extraordinary revelation raises further questions about the prime minister’s behaviour. Two former cabinet ministers, Michael Fallon and Damian Green, both lost their frontbench jobs after allegations were made against them at the start of Westminster’s #Metoo scandal in 2017. Fallon was rebuked for repeatedly touching the knee of the journalist Julia Hartleybrewer during a Tory party conference dinner 15 years earlier.
Green was accused by Kate Maltby, a Conservative activist and writer, of touching her knee in a bar. He was subsequently sacked as first secretary of state after admitting that he had lied to this newspaper about the presence of pornographic images on his House of Commons computer.
When Johnson was editor of The Spectator between 1999 and 2005, he hit the headlines after it was revealed that he was having an affair with one of his columnists, Petronella Wyatt, who had an abortion and also suffered a miscarriage during their relationship.
– Sunday Times