DON’T CARRIE ON, SAID WIFE
WIFE Carrie is said to have tipped Boris Johnson over from defiance into docile acceptance of his fate.
When the PM gathered aides around a vegetarian takeaway of lentil curry and naan bread at 8pm on Wednesday to rebuild his shattered Government, he was still determined to cling on.
But as the meeting broke up at 11pm, Mr Johnson went up to the flat above No 11 that he shares with Carrie and their children Wilfred, two, and Romy, seven months.
An insider said: “Boris talked through his predicament with Carrie, who has an astute political brain. She told him she thought the game was up, but they agreed to sleep on it.”
It was the same advice Dennis Thatcher gave to wife Margaret more than 30 years earlier in similar circumstances.
A Whitehall source said: “The PM had been angry all day – in a real state of denial and determined to stick in. He kept going on about his personal mandate like a broken record.
“The press team had taken the phones off the hook by midafternoon because they said it was unfair for anyone to have to go out and defend him.”
Mr Johnson awoke early on Thursday and by 6.30am his mind was made up and he began working on his resignation speech.
In the next two hours, more ministers and aides quit – and as the total reached 59, Mr Johnson knew he only had one option left open to him.
And yesterday the Nightmare on Downing Street began to descend into farce.
Mr Johnson’s former girlfriend Petronella Wyatt tweeted that No.10 sources had told her the PM was about to join the Tory leadership contest. No.10 said: “Not true.”
New Education minister and former teacher Andrea Jenkyns defended giving the finger to crowds baying for blood outside
Downing Street on Thursday.
She said: “I’m only human” – then admitted she would not have tolerated that excuse from her pupils. And we can reveal Mr Johnson took revenge on Michael Gove for sabotaging his 2016 leadership bid by making the sacked Housing Secretary homeless.
Mr Gove infuriated the PM on Wednesday by telling him to quit and giving him an ultimatum of 9pm to do so.
At 8.58pm Mr Johnson called Mr Gove and fired him. That not only cost Mr Gove his extra ministerial salary of £67,505 a year, leaving him his MP’S pay of £84,144, but also his £25million grace and favour apartment near
Buckingham Palace.
Meanwhile, Boris’s dad Stanley, 81, says his son will console himself over his lost job by painting.