You’re part of the Johnson family now, Stanley tells Boris’s love child
(even though PM hasn’t admitted she’s his)
BORIS Johnson’s father Stanley has for the first time acknowledged the love child the Prime Minister had with Helen Macintyre.
Mr Johnson Snr said he hoped to meet his granddaughter Stephanie soon and has chatted to her via two video calls.
Now aged ten, she was born in November 2009 after his son’s brief affair with art consultant Miss Mcintyre but has never previously been acknowledged by a member of the Johnson family.
The Prime Minister, 55, has always refused to confirm how many children he has.
In an interview, his father also said he was looking forward to meeting his 14th grandchild Wilfred, born in April to Boris and his fiancée Carrie Symonds, 32.
‘Fourteen includes Stephanie, that’s the point,’ said Mr Johnson Snr, 79.
‘I am particularly pleased to include Stephanie. I have spoken to her on FaceTime and I am thrilled.’
He added that he was looking forward very much ‘to meeting her when lockdown is over’ accompanied by his journalist daughter Rachel Johnson, who is Stephanie’s aunt.
Mr Johnson Snr admitted in the interview with The Sunday Times Magazine that the situation was new and he was ‘feeling his way’.
The announcement is an indication the Prime Minister is more comfortable with privately acknowledging his daughter after the end of his marriage to Marina Wheeler, mother of four of his children.
They wed in 1993 before divorcing in February and her anger about her ex-husband’s affair is understood to have been a barrier to the family acknowledging Stephanie.
Miss Macintyre fought a threeyear legal battle with Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, to keep the identity of her daughter’s father secret.
But in 2013, senior judges ruled that the public had a right to know about the philandering past of Mr Johnson, who was London Mayor at the time. At the Appeal Court, lawyers for the paper successfully argued it was in the public interest as it ‘went to the issue of recklessness and whether he was fit for public office’.
Miss Macintyre, who is in her midhis
‘I’ve spoken to her and I’m thrilled’
40s and runs her own highly successful company, went on to have a relationship with the society writer William Cash. Last year he revealed in a book how Mr Johnson had agreed to let him raise Stephanie.
Mr Cash, 53, told how he had already fallen in love with Miss Macintyre when she revealed the identity of her baby’s father. But plans to propose fell apart when a former boyfriend leaked details of the parentage of Stephanie, named after a sister of Miss Macintyre who had died young.
Mr Johnson Snr also reflected on his fears when the Prime Minister was taken into intensive care in April with coronavirus.
‘I felt as any father would feel when their child is in a life-threatening situation,’ he said. ‘I was 100 per cent pleased when he came out of intensive care.’
In a controversial remark, he also suggested the virus could be manmade, which contradicts the Government’s position.
Mr Johnson Snr met the Chinese ambassador in February and later lobbied ministers to hold a meeting with Beijing. But he accidentally sent a message to a journalist, raising questions about why he was involved in the issue.