His group is mortifying, his friends in the media are against him and his advisers, panicked by the rising number of corona infections, are calling for a new lockdown. Boris Johnson is experiencing difficult times and personal troubles would have been added to that. The Times was able to report that the British Prime Minister has financial concerns.
The 56-year-old Johnson incurs quite a bit of expense. He has just gone through a costly divorce with lawyer Marina Wheeler and is financially responsible for four of his six children, some of whom attend private schools, in keeping with family tradition. On the other hand, there is a ‘meager’ prime minister’s salary of over one and a half tons in pounds. That is a lot less than what the journalist and politician previously earned.
Weekly column
After all, when he was still a regular Member of Parliament and Mayor of London, he was able to supplement his civil servant salary with his weekly column in The Daily Telegraph, for which he received a quarter of a million pounds, writing top-selling books, and giving lectures. His political ambition meant more than halving his income, difficult for someone who wants to live big.
Opposite The Times Friends claimed he has a hard time living on 10 Downing Street, where he lives with his fiancé Carrie and baby Wilfred. The cramped upstairs apartment is not an ideal place for a family anyway. Apart from a cleaner, there are no housekeeping staff. Even a nanny for the little one would hardly be financially viable. He would suffer from depression, just like his hero Winston Churchill at the time.
That he is not feeling well, is also visible to ordinary Britons. He is under pressure to make unpopular decisions, such as drastic restrictions on civil liberties, which is not nice for someone who wants to be loved. His listless performances in the House of Commons are also starting to stand out. For example, he meekly let an attack by deputy opposition leader Ed Miliband go over him last Wednesday.
Aftermaths of Covid
He also seems to suffer from forgetfulness. Johnson answered questions incoherently to a parliamentary committee and said he could not remember his promise to test ten million Britons daily for corona from next year. A week earlier he had announced this ‘Operation Moonshot’ with a lot of fuss. Recently, his advisor’s father-in-law Dominic Cummings claimed that Johnson is still suffering from his Covid experience.
There are more and more rumors in the British press that Michael Gove, a kind of minister without Portfolio, is taking more and more power behind the scenes. Gove has traditionally got on well with Cummings. The situation in which the prime minister finds itself was described with ridicule a few months ago Guardiancolumnist Marina Hyde: ‘Johnson wanted to be prime minister and he would have liked to have been. The problem is the middle part. ‘
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Boris Johnson’s corona policy divides the nation: ‘the economy can’t have a second lockdown’
Groups of more than six people have been banned in the UK since the beginning of this week. The Rule of Six, a corona measure, is very stirring. “More people die from suicide than from Covid.”
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