Downing Street: the PM’s design challenge
To gauge the personalities of our recent PMs, you could do worse than consider the interior design of the flat above No. 11 Downing Street, said Tom Peck in The Independent. Tony Blair – who started the trend for PMs and their families to live in the four-bedroom flat at No. 11, instead of the smaller one at
No. 10 – gave it a major refurbishment when he moved in, as did the Camerons. By contrast, Gordon Brown and Theresa May spent the bare minimum. Now, it is getting what appears to be another expensive reboot. According to Tatler, Boris Johnson’s partner Carrie Symonds is seeking to banish the Mays’ “John Lewis furniture nightmare” with a makeover inspired by the celebrity eco-designer Lulu Lytle. The question, though, is who will cover the cost, which Johnson is reportedly fretting could be as much as £200,000?
PMs are entitled to up to £30,000 of taxpayers’ money a year to maintain their lodgings, said Rowan Moore in The Guardian. That leaves a large remaining balance for Johnson, whose finances have taken a big hit from his divorce and the loss of his lucrative newspaper column. To help cover the gap, he has apparently floated the idea of setting up a charity through which donors could contribute to Downing Street improvements. The plan appears to be inspired by a US non-profit organisation that, since 1961, has helped maintain the White House, but Johnson’s version seems altogether more self-serving and open to conflicts of interest. The idea “stinks”.
I don’t understand why anyone would want to transform the No. 11 flat into “a Dubai boutique hotel”, said Janice Turner in The Times. It’s perfectly nice as it is, largely thanks to Sam Cam opening up the kitchen. Since the PM and his fiancée will spend most weekends at Chequers, and their tenancy is up for review in a few years anyway, why don’t they just give it a lick of paint, throw down some rugs, and borrow some modern art from the public collection? “A radical refit makes no sense. Except that the impulse to rip out a kitchen and live under a cloud of builder’s dust for three months, unable to find a thing, deranges every first-time mother I’ve ever met.”