To the majority of voters, snobbery is the headline offence of the prime minister’s flat refurbishment
Some stories touch the nation at a level above politics, somewhere nearer the self; Boris Johnson’s renovations to his Downing Street flat is one. Had it just been a pile of numbers, it’s possible that even his most ardent opponents would have lost interest. Yes, a £30,000 annual allowance for refurbishments sounds like more than any normal person could dream of spending. Sure, there’s £58,000 he spent on top of that to account for – donated by Lord Brownlow, but after what shenanigans, and what was all that about a blind trust?
Yet in the jumble of missing puzzle pieces, boring parliamentary rules over declarations, and the odd commentator dragging up tax and interest – words designed to stifle curiosity – this could have died down. Electoral commission investigation notwithstanding, consider the context: a prime minister who nobody expected to tell the truth or manage his personal affairs with probity in the first place.
