![]() Think duck house, except with bulletproof glass and costing a full 91 times as much.” Had the prime minister been allowed to do what he wanted, it would have been good to see the usual political interviewers make way for Kevin McCloud, who would don his hard hat of hardheadedness and observe mildly to the couple: “Well actually, you’ve gone an infinite per cent over your budget, haven’t you, because NONE OF THIS IS YOUR MONEY.” The less entertaining reality is that the MPs’ expenses era now feels like the halcyon days of taking responsibility, given that Peter Viggers, the MP who tried to get his duck house funded, never even succeeded, but did at least end up quitting when his attempt came to light, for what he admitted was a “ridiculous and grave error of judgment”.Ġ0:44 'A bare-chested horseback ride': Johnson and Trudeau mock Putin at G7 summit – videoĪll of this, then, is the inescapable backdrop to the prime minister’s current gadding about on the world stage. Do picture the Johnsons telling the cameras: “I think we’d call our aesthetic for the project, MPs’ Expenses meets Louis Quatorze. ![]() Still, after the £840-a-roll gold wallpaper and the rest of the Downing Street flat refurbishment saga, it’s good to see the holder of the highest public office in the land amassing almost enough mad folly projects for a whole series of Grand Designs. (Needless to say, Bradley has never uttered a word on the worry of increased dependency on rich donors, and continues to back Johnson to the hilt.) One Conservative MP, Ben Bradley, claimed the latter scheme would simply lead to increased dependency on the state. The fact that a child’s pleasure dome was being decreed at the very same time Johnson was demanding his MPs voted against a plea to extend free school meals for the poorest children over the Christmas holidays locates it even more firmly in the realms of the grotesque. But then, it’s all there, isn’t it, from the mind-boggling discovery that this got all the way to design modification stage, to the reappearance of the unflushable Lord Brownlow, fast becoming the Zelig of stories in which a greedy and venal prime minister apparently takes him for a soft touch. Who builds a baby a treehouse for £150,000, which can currently buy you a three-bedroom semi-detached house in Wakefield? Answer that question without using a four-letter word. At the time, their son would have been about six months old. It was only when the Johnsons’ security staff objected definitively on the basis that the treehouse was visible from the road that the welfare king and queen of Downing Street had to reluctantly abandon their plans. “He was told it would look terrible,” a government source told the paper, yet the PM pressed ahead. ![]() As reported by the Times, Johnson and his wife planned to build an eye-wateringly expensive treehouse in the grounds of Chequers in autumn 2020, potentially funded by the Tory donor Lord Brownlow. The story of the treehouse somehow still retains the power to shock, if only as a reminder that there really is no beginning to the prime minister’s financial morality. It’s like hearing that Churchill whined and whined to get some mid-century sad-sack to buy his grandson a pony. No matter what Commonwealth/G7/Nato posturing comes after that, you’ll have found it rather difficult to suspend your disbelief. I n many ways it was impressive to get a whole two days into Boris Johnson’s world statesman tour before it emerged he’d tried to get a Tory donor to fund a £150,000 treehouse for his then infant son.
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