Boris Johnson hasn’t always enjoyed the best relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s titles, having once been sacked as a Times trainee for fabricating quotes. But relations between the former Tory leader and the Sun king himself have been cordial for much of the past decade. And evidence for that is found in the newly updated register of MPs’ interests.
Johnson’s latest entry in the list shows that he flew out for a business meeting in Montana between 11-12 October last month – just over a week before Liz Truss’s resignation prompted Johnson to mount an abortive comeback effort to succeed her. Murdoch last year purchased the 340,000-acre Beaverhead Ranch in the western American state in what was the biggest ranch sale in Montana’s history.
According to Commons’ records, Murdoch paid £11,559 for ‘internal US air travel, accommodation and hospitality’ for Johnson and two members of his staff. Just nine days after that Montana meeting, the ex-PM was hurrying back to the UK from the Dominican Republican for his short-lived attempt to take back the premiership. Oh to be a fly on the wall at that Montana meeting…
The rest of that American trip certainly proved to be a fruitful one for Johnson. He got £276,130 for a speaking engagement in Washington DC which took eight and a half hours to prepare and deliver: the equivalent of £541 a minute. And Matt Hancock meanwhile £10,000 to speak at a fintech summit – just weeks before the near-collapse of the crypto market. Talk about the reverse Midas touch.
Still, at least there is one inspirational story among such failures: Nadhim Zahawi is writing a book about his early life before he entered parliament. The Tory party chairman fled Saddam Hussein’s regime with his Kurdish family at the age of eleven and has described his subsequent success story in business and politics as ‘the British dream.’ Zahawi has received a £6,150 advance from Harper Collins to date for 175 hours’ work over the past six months and is now working with JK Rowling’s agent Neil Blair.
Here’s hoping it provides some magic amid the madness in Westminster.
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