 Boris Johnson is a liar and Boris Johnson is an opportunist and Boris Johnson despite spending his life seeking the highest office in the land cares little about anything other than himself. Now these are all claims about Britain's Prime Minister you'll have heard before indeed you'll probably have heard them on this very show. However the Sunday Times have revealed another angle on the Tory leader I wasn't aware of. Now this is that Boris Johnson is apparently broke the background to the scandals over Tory donors paying for an upgrade to the Downing Street flat is that Boris Johnson despite earning 157,000 pounds a year cannot afford his lifestyle he's getting into debt. On the face of it the idea that a Prime Minister cannot afford to do the job on a salary of 157,000 pounds is ridiculous but it is clear that when the bill for the refurbishment overseen by the boho sheep designer Lulu little arrived last year Johnson was unable or unwilling to pay. The initial invoice was settled by the Cabinet Office the Conservative Party then refunded the excess amount of 58,000 pounds at the same time the Tory donor Lord Brownlow of Sherlock Rowe gave the same amount to cover the costs. Senior Tory sources say that Johnson has taken out a commercial loan to repay the money he owes to the party number 10 refuses to confirm or deny this claim the Ministerial Code of Conduct stipulates that even bank loans should be registered to avoid conflicts of interest the register of ministerial interest has not been updated since July last year. Now this really adds some flavour to what we knew about the story so far so other journalists have reported that essentially to pay for this extravagant refurbishment of the flat Boris Johnson had I mean essentially asked for money from from the Conservative Party and Tory donors that was how he was planning to pay for the refurbishment then when the newspapers got involved and started reporting on this and saying this looks a little bit dodgy Boris Johnson was like oh no I'm going to cover the costs I'm going to cover the costs and now all you hear from Tory press officers is they basically ignore any question and say Boris Johnson has actually paid for it Boris Johnson has actually paid for it they ignore the fact that someone initially paid for it and probably Boris Johnson never wanted to pay for it he just did because of this controversy what this adds to it is that in paying for it after the row started the Prime Minister is now in in debt he had to take out a commercial loan to pay this back it's surprising at least especially when he's earning quite so much money now the report also suggested it wasn't just the flat refurbishment that Johnson was relying on donors to pay for so they write senior conservatives say donors have been approached about funding other aspects of the couple's lifestyle a prominent MP received a complaint from a Tory donor that they were asked to foot the bill for a nanny for Wilfred Johnson's son with Simons who turned one last week the donor is alleged to have said I don't mind paying for leaflets but I resent being asked to pay to literally wipe the Prime Minister's baby's bottom so every aspect of their life they're asking for wealthy Tory donors to cover which is quite problematic when you think that yes it is also Tory donors who seem to get privileged access to public sector contracts so whilst Boris Johnson is desperately asking people to pay for various parts of his lifestyle he is also making big decisions about public money you can see there's some potential conflicts of interests there so how did the Prime Minister find himself in such a financial tight spot now the article goes into some detail here it goes into the ingoings of the Prime Minister disposable income they know he has and then some of the outgoings that every Prime Minister faces the income tax and national insurance bill on Johnson's £157,000 salary amounts to about £63,000 which would leave him with about £95,000 a year but his salary is topped up with royalties for his books which have amounted to about £25,000 since he became Prime Minister in addition he has received £28,000 in personal gifts and donations in that time according to his register of interest that includes a £15,000 trip to Mustique in December 2019 courtesy of the car phone warehouse co-founder David Ross which is the subject of an inquiry by Catherine Stone the parliamentary commissioner for standards so some basic math say he's got 95 grand disposable income a year since he became Prime Minister almost two years 25,000 pounds in royalties the disposable income you know he's got at least 110 grand a year to play with if you and hire if you include some of those personal gifts so you know it's quite a lot by any measure in terms of the costs of being a Prime Minister the outgoings that one has to subject oneself to if one leads the country the Sunday Times reports there are other costs associated with the role of Prime Minister while he and his family can live rent free in the number 11 Downing Street flat he must pay a tax liability for heating lighting and maintenance which comes to about £7,000 a year he also pays a council tax bill of £1,655 a year Johnson covers the costs of any food and drink for personal consumption even if it comes from the Downing Street kitchens they go on as a protected person he receives tax fair funded travel and can stay at checkers the Prime Minister's official country residence in Buckinghamshire however whenever Johnson or Simon's entertain guests at the house who are not on official visits Johnson must pay for their food and drinks which a guest once estimated to cost £75 per head so none of this gets us very close to understanding why the Prime Minister is broke he earns 95 grand a year that's after tax that's his disposable income and he's also got income on the side from royalties etc the costs they've talked about that he has to pay for our food electricity and council tax and then some money when his friends come to visit him at his country houses that gets to stay in for free not many of us have to pay when our friends visit our country houses because we don't have country houses but we all do have to pay for food and electricity and council tax so this doesn't get us very far what and you probably will have been able to infer by now is that the reason the Prime Minister is broke is because of discretionary for spending because of money he spends that most people don't spend and most people don't even consider spending so on top of the 200 grand refurb for the flat something not many people would spend according to the Times Johnson also hired a personal chef while he recovered from Covid and then at £165 per hour personal trainer his divorce with his second wife is also apparently fairly expensive or was fairly expensive according to the Times this all adds up Johnson has told friends that he needs to earn about £300,000 a year twice his salary to keep his head above water a former number 10 insider said it was received wisdom that he is permanently broke you know I'd play the world's tiniest violin but I'm afraid I kind of ordered so he says that he needs £300,000 a year just to keep his head above water the median income in this country is around £29,000 the median salary in this country is around 30 31,000 pounds so a tenth of what he says he needs in order to be able to survive to have a decent standard of living so if he's struggling on his 160,000 pounds a year is it his salary as a as the Prime Minister then God knows what's expected for the rest of us and again when we think about things like living within your means I don't think that any family should have to struggle to afford the basics but it doesn't seem to me that Boris Johnson all his family are struggling to afford the basics meanwhile the Conservative Party were instrumental in trying to push through a two-child limit for recipients of universal credit which would mean that any further children would have gone unsupported a really cruel and punitive policy which essentially punishes children for being born into impoverished circumstances Boris Johnson doesn't think oh well you know maybe should I think about how much money I have available to me before I have yet another kid with my fiance no he just does it and goes well someone else is going to put the bill whether it's you know the taxpayer in terms of the lovely grant that they give us to do up our flat for 30,000 pounds every year or it will be a Conservative Party donor essentially I don't have to deal with this does he have to make the kinds of decisions the rest of us have to make in terms of oh you know stuck on holiday this year or do I cover you know these other costs you know maybe your your sinks flooded you had to get that fixed or something no he doesn't have to make that decision because he could take a 15,000 pound trip to a private Caribbean island because these corporate interests know that they can essentially lubricate their relationship with the Prime Minister with money and gifts and things which are worth a lot because this is a man fundamentally who doesn't have the integrity or the good sense to say no that's because quite frankly he doesn't take the business of government very seriously at all because if you did if you did take the business of government seriously you would go you know what there's a quid pro quo here and i'm not comfortable with that i'm not comfortable with you lord you know brown low or you mr carphone warehouse man having something over my head when it comes to matters of policy or when you want something from me someone who's serious about government wouldn't be up to this kind of stuff but we know that Boris Johnson isn't he's in it for himself he's in it for the glories entirely venal and self-serving so when i read stories like this the thing that pisses me off isn't so much Boris Johnson's behavior because what are you going to do you're going to blame a snake for being a snake it's part of his nature it's the fact that you have these so-called journalists including wife of Michael gove Sarah vines saying things like oh well what would you want for the prime minister to live in a skip and what that shows me is that you've got significant portions of our fourth estate who should be holding power to account in fact treating themselves as essentially you know Boris Johnson's human kevlar trying to manage public opinion by saying these things which are grotesquely insulting not just to our intelligence because we can see through it but grotesquely insulting to our own circumstances and the material conditions in which we have to live so i'm glad that the sunday times is doing this kind of work but you know the lord giveth with one hand and take the way with the other so i get some good journalism on the one hand and then i get some fucking awful comment pieces on the other