Wild parties in Tuscany and a peerage for the Russian newspaper owner are hardly signs of a precautionary approach
On the night Boris Johnson finally threw his lot in with the Brexiters, naturally only his nearest and dearest were privy to his thoughts.
His then wife, Marina Wheeler, was there, plus the leading leaver Michael Gove and his then wife, Sarah Vine. The odd one out over a supper of slow-roasted lamb at Johnson and Wheeler’s Islington home, meanwhile, was Evgeny Lebedev. The millionaire son of a former Russian KGB officer apparently hung out with the wives making “polite conversation in stage whispers” while Johnson and Gove talked by speakerphone to a fellow cabinet minister who was trying vainly to persuade them to back remain. Vine did not explain, in her subsequent newspaper column describing the evening, why Lebedev was playing gooseberry on such a momentous and sensitive night for the nation’s future. If the presence of the Evening Standard and Independent proprietor surprised her, however, she didn’t say so.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
