Boris Johnson earned more than £5m from less than two years of paid speeches after standing down as prime minister, leaked files suggest.
Transcripts and itineraries demonstrate the globe-trotting nature of the former prime minister’s new life as a public speaker. He made 34 paid appearances between leaving office in September 2022 and May last year, according to a file in the leak.
He spoke at a conference on leadership in Delhi, a blockchain symposium in Singapore, in a public lecture series in Lagos and at a summit on green hydrogen in Abu Dhabi. Each earned Johnson US$350,000 (￡259,000).
Photo: EPA-EFE
Some of the speeches were delivered in public or have previously been reported on. Others, such as the former prime minister’s bizarre turn as the headline act at the 50th birthday party of a German pharmaceutical company boss, have not.
The details are contained in a leak of files from his private office that were obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets and seen by the Guardian.
Some of the speeches may give rise to questions of potential conflicts of interest. For example, he was paid US$250,000 to give a speech in California in May 2024 to an American private equity firm, Clearlake Capital. Two years earlier, in May 2022, Johnson’s government had authorised the ￡2.5 billion sale of Chelsea football club to, among others, Clearlake. A source at the company, however, said the two events were entirely unconnected.
Photo: AP
Other speeches will raise awkward questions for the prime minister about whether he has been prepared to treat audiences to views or information that a former prime minister would ordinarily be expected to keep confidential in exchange for cash.
Audiences were treated to his views on Barack Obama (“the most inert, invertebrate president we’ve had for a long, long time”) and Vladimir Putin (“like the fat boy in Dickens, he wants to make your flesh creep”), as well private anecdotes about the late Queen Elizabeth II, including a time he said she advised him to talk to birds.
It is perfectly legal for former politicians to make paid speeches. Tony Blair, Theresa May and even Liz Truss have all charged large sums for paid appearances.
‘CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR DEAL’
But aspects of some of Johnson’s speeches – and the size of the fees he charged – will inevitably raise questions about the moral hazard of former prime ministers being allowed to monetise their time in office, and Johnson’s relaxed attitude to rules or conventions.
In his paid appearance before Clearlake, for instance, Johnson explicitly referenced his government’s role in the sale of Chelsea FC to the firm. “I’m proud to have played a small part in selling Chelsea to you,” he said shortly after taking the stage. “Congratulations on your deal, ￡2.5 billion!”
Of Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch forced to sell the club, he joked: “We did something which we don’t normally do in the UK. We expropriated his assets.”
Unlike other recent Conservative former prime ministers who have turned their hand to the speech circuit, Johnson is an effortless performer. The same combination of easy erudition, snappy turns of phrase and relaxed attitude to offhand indiscretions that made him such a successful politician is on full display in the transcripts.
A session for Centerview Partners, a US investment bank, for which he was paid $405,000, was treated to insights into Johnson’s private encounters with the late queen, according to the files. He said she lobbied him during the Brexit negotiations to ensure her stable of horses could be transported to France for breeding operations.
“It was very, very important to make sure that her broodmares could get to France and meet their French boyfriends,” he said, to laughter from the room. “That certainly did come up.”
He also described his last encounter with the queen two days before she died. “It was such a completely heartbreaking thing, because I could tell that she was not at all well, and she told me as much,” he said.
‘DON’T MENTION THE WAR’
Other disclosures were more eccentric. “You’re the first audience ever to hear this, Chatham House rules,” he told one audience, referring to the convention that listeners can use information but not reveal its source. He said the queen told him that to stave off bad luck from magpie sightings (a traditional English superstition), “you’ve got to say ‘hello, Mr Magpie, it is Wednesday the 9th of November.’ And then you’re OK.”
But by far the strangest speech was Johnson’s turn as the main act at a 50th birthday party in Albufeira, Portugal, for the vice-president of a German medical data company. The company appears to have no connection to Johnson or the Conservative party, and the compere for the evening’s entertainment explained to the room that the former prime minister had only been hired because the vice-president loved talking about politics.
“There is only one rule for you,” Johnson’s host said as he welcomed the prime minister to the stage. “Since it’s a German crowd, don’t mention the war.”
“Which one?” replied Johnson, before launching into tips on later life. “The reality is that you are no longer in the first flush,” he began. Life might feel like “teetering at the top of a great Alp, a Jungfrau, a Matterhorn” before “the shades of the afternoon are starting to lengthen”.
“It won’t be all that long before you will be called upon to make that last great long schuss back to the chalet. The final schuss,” he said. “I’m afraid that last moment can come very suddenly, as they said of a famous skier who died not so long ago. He went downhill fast at the end.”
But for himself, he continued, 50 had been only the beginning. “After years of literary mediocrity, I wrote a No 1 bestseller. Since turning 50, I’ve been a foreign secretary, I’ve been prime minister of the United Kingdom.” Other achievements followed: leaving the EU, Europe’s fastest COVID vaccination programme, supporting Ukraine in its fight for freedom and bringing his total number of children to eight.
“And if I can do it,” he told the German vice-president, “you can do even more!”
Johnson did not respond directly to questions about his speeches. He e-mailed a statement to the Guardian, denying his office had misused a subsidy scheme to support an ex-PM’s public duties. The public duty costs allowance (PDCA) should not be used for private or commercial purposes.
“This story is rubbish. The PDCA has been used entirely in accordance with the rules. The Guardian should change its name to Pravda.”
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