Why Boris Johnson and Jennifer Arcuri’s Affair Matters

A current prime minister and former mayor of a major capital city had a four-year affair with a businesswoman who received £126,000 of taxpayer cash in sponsorships and grants. It’s a shocking story, isn’t it? It sounds awfully like the kind of corruption story we’d see from the nations Dominic Raab demands democracy from. Or so you’d think.

That current prime minister is Boris Johnson, the capital city is London, and the businesswoman is Jennifer Arcuri. For some reason, these details matter. Our government can’t be corrupt (or so most of the media would have it), there is ‘no case to answer’ for the PM and having an affair with a woman who you also give public money to is completely fine. That’s what you get if you ask Number Ten, whose briefings seem to be even more Trumpian and post-truth by the day.

So, why is it that Johnson has largely got off scot-free from the Mirror’s exclusives this week? Why hasn’t this story plagued the prime minister? Is it because the affair doesn’t matter? No — it’s not. It’s because the media is letting Johnson get away with it.

The solacious details of the affair — that Johnson and Arcuri supposedly made love in his house shortly before his wife returned home — are stomach-churning and something you wish you’d never known but can’t un-know. But the mayor of London handing hundreds of thousands of pounds to a businesswoman he’s sleeping with is obviously a detail that matters. It is obviously conflict of interest — and that, according to City Hall rules, requires declaration. Such declaration from Boris Johnson — whose press secretary Allegra Stratton described acting with ‘honesty and integrity’ — was never received.

Alas, the affair matters. It matters firstly because it is the latest revelation in what seems to be a developing trend in Johnson’s government. The trend is that they can get away with whatever they want when it comes to public money, as the BBC, for example, isn’t holding them to account for it anyway. The BBC has largely ignored this particular story, though how surprising is that when insiders report journalists have a ‘deep-seated reluctance’ to cast Johnson in a bad light? Whether the reluctance is coming from the top, or from those at Millbank — the offices of BBC Politics — it doesn’t matter. It means journalists are complicit in the politicians’ failure to perform to the standard that is rightly expected of them.

Johnson’s affair is the exact opposite of integrity and the standards of public life. In any other government, this would be enough to warrant serious leadership questions, but not here. The loveable old-Etonian, Oxbridge rogue gets away with it every time — and so do his mates.

One week, it’s Matt Hancock awarding a friend a £14.4 million PPE supply contract, the next it’s Priti Patel’s strange Home Office expenses in Primark, or Matt Hancock breaking the law over Covid contracts transparency. One thing that is sure to be the same every week, though, is that most media barely dedicate a section to it on their homepage.

Johnson and Arcuri’s affair demonstrates a clear breach of the Nolan principles, which are, as described by the government themselves, ‘the basis of the ethical standards expected of public office holders’. They consist of, to name but a few: objectivity, accountability, openness and honesty.

How can Boris Johnson be objective when giving money to a secret lover? How can Boris Johnson be accountable when he did not declare an interest when authorising this money? How can Boris Johnson be open when he told the media that he has nothing further to say on this story? And, finally, how can Boris Johnson be honest when at every point, he has proven himself to be a liar? The man was literally having an affair — he is hardly the pinnacle of honesty, or any of these principles for that matter.

This scandal matters because what we do — or do not do — about it sets a precedent. Slowly but surely, we are seeing a media slacking on the job: holding the government to account. And where do we go from there? The erosion of integrity and ethical standards in public life began with the expenses scandal and has morphed into Boris Johnson’s crony corruption. I truly fear that it ends somewhere way, way worse. When these people are not held to account, or challenged seriously over their actions, they are free to do as they please. And they know it.

What is clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together is that this government is full of crooks and liars and bent politicians, and we are sitting here watching it all unfold before us. It’s corruption in slow motion, but before we know it, it will be corruption that seeps into every aspect of public life, creating a further divide between the public and those who supposedly serve them.