Carrie on decorating! Workmen in Downing Street again
FIRST Boris Johnson’s wife, Carrie, ordered a swanky revamp of their Downing Street flat, rumoured to have cost £200,000.
Now, I can disclose that the ground floor has been given a plush makeover as well — at the taxpayers’ expense.
Carrie is said to have described the flat they inherited from Theresa May as a ‘John Lewis furniture nightmare’ and their overhaul upstairs featured custommade furniture and gold wallpaper by her friend Lulu Lytle.
The improvements left downstairs, where the staff and politicians beaver away, looking very shabby by comparison. So over the summer, I hear, there have been extensive renovations including an elegant cream paint scheme, brand new deep, fluffy red carpets, and modern artworks hung on the walls.
‘It’s been given a proper upgrade,’ says my Westminster mole. ‘It didn’t make sense to have the downstairs looking like the poor relation to the upstairs flat.’
Even the outside of Downing Street has been given a lick of paint, with No 10’s front door getting a shiny new look.
A staffer admits the works have been ‘very disruptive’ but, luckily for the Johnsons, they took place while the couple enjoyed time away at Chequers in Buckinghamshire, the West Country and, as I revealed last week, Balmoral with the Queen.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who lives above the property next door and has been working hard on the new plan for social care, has not been so fortunate: there has been plenty of scaffolding, and workmen coming and going for weeks.
Just how much taxpayers’ money was spent will be released in the Cabinet Office’s annual report, a spokesman says. Downing Street was forced to reveal the source of the funds for the upstairs refurbishment last year, after a string of exclusive stories in this newspaper. Taxpayers paid £28,600 for the Lulu Lytle wallpaper and furnishings, and this was topped up with a £52,802 ‘bridging loan’ from Conservative Party funds.
This was paid off with a loan from Tory donor Lord Brownlow, but the party later announced that the costs had been ‘personally settled’ by Boris himself.