Chillaxing at Chequers: how Boris Johnson used
the PM’s country house
The 16th-century mansion was given to the nation to
allow its leader to unwind, and Johnson took full advantage
Heather
Stewart
Heather
Stewart
Thu 25 May
2023 07.00 BST
When
Chequers was gifted to the nation a century ago, the intent was to allow prime
ministers two days a week of relaxation in the Chiltern hills, because “the
better the health of our rulers, the more sanely will they rule”.
Boris
Johnson is alleged to have taken the invitation to kick back more seriously
than most, treating Chequers as both a bolthole and a party pad.
“It’s part
of the grandeur that he thinks is his due,” said a former colleague. Even after
resigning, Johnson and his wife were reluctantly dissuaded from holding a
lavish wedding bash in the grounds of the 16th-century mansion, before handing
back the keys.
They spent
Christmas 2019, after Johnson’s landslide election victory, at No 10, where Mrs
Johnson later oversaw a notoriously costly redesign.
But over
time they came to spend an increasing amount of time at the wood-panelled
Buckinghamshire residence, which is decorated with paintings and antiques and
set in large, heavily guarded grounds.
It is
formally owned by a trust, and MPs and officials who have visited describe
Chequers as comfortable, despite its size, with attentive staff always ready
with a cup of coffee or a bite to eat.
“They treat
you as important, which Boris would have liked,” said one former visitor who
knows Johnson well. “It’s cosy, you’re looked after, your every need is
attended to.” Prime ministers are free to entertain at the house – as long as
they pick up the costs of food and drink.
After
Johnson was hospitalised with Covid in April 2020, it was to Chequers that he
returned to recuperate.
It later
emerged that even before that, Carrie Johnson – then his fiancee – had based
herself at Chequers, with the prime minister commuting back and forth to No 10
during the early days of the pandemic.
Explaining
this arrangement after it was first reported almost two years later, Johnson’s
official spokesperson said: “At the time, as you know, Mrs Johnson was heavily
pregnant, in a vulnerable category, and advised to minimise social contacts. So
in line with clinical guidance and to minimise the risk to her, they were based
at Chequers during that period, with the prime minister commuting to Downing
Street to work.”
It would
have come as a surprise to many members of the public at the time that
“commuting” – or moving their family to a safer place – was within the rules.
Rachel
Johnson, the former prime minister’s sister, displayed similar insouciance when
she told LBC listeners on Tuesday, “as far as I am aware, all the rules were
followed whenever I went to Chequers, which wasn’t often enough”. Presumably
the officials who referred Johnson’s diary entries to the police felt that was
at least unclear.
“The whole
family have a massive sense of entitlement,” harrumphed one former cabinet
minister.
Johnson’s
former adviser Dominic Cummings hinted in an interview with the website UnHerd
last year that the Partygate investigation should have taken in goings-on at
Chequers. Asked whether there were parties at Chequers during the pandemic, he
replied: “So people say.”
Johnson and
his growing family reportedly felt so at home at the Buckinghamshire retreat by
the autumn of 2020 that he planned to build a £150,000 treehouse in the grounds
for his son Wilfred, an idea apparently vetoed on security grounds.
They appear
not to have been so comfortable with Chequers’ long-serving staff, however,
with the senior housekeeper Charlotte Vine departing in 2020, amid reports
about a clash with Carrie Johnson – something Mrs Johnson’s spokesperson
denied.
It was over
dinner at Chequers that the Johnsons wooed Allegra Stratton, whose appointment
as the prime minister’s press secretary precipitated the acrimonious departure
of the key advisers Cummings and Lee Cain.
Increasingly
preoccupied with financial worries, it was also at Chequers that Johnson
entertained the financier Richard Sharp and his friend Sam Blyth, a distant
relative of Johnson’s who went on to act as guarantor for an £800,000 loan.
All three
have insisted money was not discussed, but it was Sharp’s failure to disclose
his connection to the loan that led to his recent resignation as BBC chair.
When
Theresa May was prime minister, she tended to prefer spending time at her more
modest constituency home in the Berkshire village of Sonning, where she would
escape for weekends.
Chequers
was mainly used for welcoming foreign dignitaries – including Donald Trump –
and for holding key meetings.
May’s
former press secretary Paul Harrison said: “In itself it’s quite rarefied – not
many people get to go, it’s exclusive – so an invite feels like a bigger deal
than it would be to go into the PM’s office in the House of Commons, even
though you’re essentially doing the same thing.”
May
summoned her warring cabinet there to a dramatic Brexit showdown in July 2018
(the “Chequers summit”) that ultimately precipitated Johnson’s resignation as
foreign secretary – once the Brexit secretary, David Davis, had jumped first.
Johnson
then helped foment a vigorous “chuck Chequers” campaign from the backbenches
that helped to cement his reputation with grassroots Tory members – and seal
May’s fate.
At
Christmas 2021, Downing Street released pictures taken at Chequers of Johnson,
by now married, with his wife, new baby Romy and Dilyn the dog, joining a Zoom
call with NHS staff from a squishy blue sofa.
They could
not have looked more at home, but after the Partygate revelations and the
ham-fisted defence of the disgraced MP Owen Paterson, the seeds of his
departure from No 10 seven months later had already been sown.
Johnson
certainly took full advantage of Chequers, whose donors, Arthur and Ruth Lee,
meant it to act as a country estate for prime ministers in a new, democratic
age when they might not necessarily possess their own. Whether he ruled “more
sanely” as a result of the time spent in the Chiltern hideaway may perhaps be
best left to history to judge.
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