Stanley gives his blessing to son’s new ‘First Lady’
WHILE Boris Johnson is trying to plot his way to No10, his ‘First Lady’ was yesterday taking her first steps in public life – alongside his father Stanley.
Girlfriend Carrie Symonds, a former Tory Party spin doctor, was the centre of media attention when she addressed an antiwhaling protest in London.
Ms Symonds, 30, who started dating the married ex-Foreign Secretary, 54, last summer, joined demonstrators opposing Japan’s plans to resume commercial whaling for the first time in three decades.
While Mr Johnson stayed away from the event, his 78-year-old conservationist father was happy to pose with Ms Symonds, who is now an adviser to the financial firm Bloomberg.
She told the protesters: ‘There can be no good reason to resume commercial whaling.
‘We human beings are the custodian of this planet.’
Her comments echo a newspaper column written by Mr Johnson four weeks ago, when he launched a scathing attack on the Japanese government for ‘the brutal harpooning of beautiful, intelligent and endangered mammals’.
He wrote: ‘Just you try and be harpooned. You see how you like it. It can take hours for whales to die – in extreme agony. To skewer such a creature, with a barbed and inaccurate lance, seems almost blasphemously cruel.’
The Mail on Sunday revealed earlier this month that Mr Johnson had started divorce proceedings and was in a ‘serious’ relationship with Ms Symonds.
Although the couple have been pictured together, they have yet to make a joint public appearance. It emerged in September that Mr Johnson and his wife Marina were planning to split up after 25 years of marriage. Friends say he has been trying to keep his new relationship discreet out of consideration for her.
Speaking to the media yesterday, Ms Symonds said: ‘The main reason often given for whaling is that it’s tradition. But I think this is the kind of tradition that should remain in the dustbin of history.’
She declined to comment on Mr Johnson.