Boris Johnson and his fiancée
Carrie Symonds carried out renovations on their private residence, the flat
above 11 Downing Street.
The prime minister
receives an annual public grant of £30,000 to spend on his living quarters. But
there's been speculation the final bill came to as much as £200,000.
Last week, Mr
Johnson's former chief adviser Dominic Cummings claimed the prime minister had
planned to solve this shortfall by having donors "secretly pay" for
the work.
Mr Cummings said this
would have been "unethical, foolish, possibly illegal" and would mean
the PM "almost certainly broke the rules on proper disclosure of political
donations if conducted in the way he intended".
Mr Johnson himself
insisted "I covered the costs" during an angry exchange with the
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer at Prime Minister's Questions this week.
But he repeatedly refused to answer questions about whether any
money was initially loaned to cover the costs.
But why does the PM
live next door to No 10?
Like several of his
recent predecessors, Mr Johnson and Ms Symonds are living at No 11 because the
four-bedroom flat there is much larger than the one above No 10.
Tony Blair was the first prime minister to live at No 11 - he and
his wife Cherie turned the space into a family home for themselves and their
three (later four) children.
Now The pound was steady on Thursday as dovish Fed’s outlook weighed on greenback but political risks limit gains. Investors are watching political developments in Britain, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under pressure from a series of accusations about how he responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and who paid for the refurbishment of his flat, as well as an inquiry into leaks of private information from his office.
Immediate resistance can be seen at 1.3978 (Daily high), an
upside break can trigger rise towards 1.4015.
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