Defiant Boris Johnson gives a thumbs-up as he returns home

A defiant Boris Johnson gave waiting photographers a cheery thumbs up as he arrived at his home this afternoon.

The former Foreign Secretary was pictured arriving at his Oxfordshire home apparently wearing the same clothes – a blue suit and pink shirt – that he was spotted in yesterday. 

Last night Mr Johnson was pictured looking glum in the garden of his home with his head in his hands, just hours after upsetting other Tory MPs with his comments on Brexit and amid much speculation over his impending divorce.

A defiant Boris Johnson gave waiting photographers a cheery thumbs up as he arrived at his home this afternoon  – apparently wearing last night’s clothes

He gave a more enthusiastic thumbs up after they moved their cars so he could drive in

Marina (pictured) began divorce proceedings when rumours of an affair surfaced

Mr Johnson’s critics accused him of using disgusting language to distract attention from his private life (pictured, former Tory aide Carrie Symonds)

The former foreign secretary is being divorced by long-suffering wife Marina over claims of another affair. The former Mayor of London’s wife is expected to serve divorce papers branding him an ‘adulterer,’ it was claimed last night.

A source told The Sun she is looking to move on quickly as she has ‘had enough.’

They said: ‘The papers are coming imminently. They were due within the next fortnight but Marina’s just had enough.’

News of the divorce comes as it is claimed at least a dozen Tory MPs are ready to quit the party to stop Boris Johnson becoming leader.

They issued the warning last night after he sparked outrage by saying Theresa May’s Brexit strategy had put Britain in a suicide vest and handed the detonator to Brussels.

Mr Johnson’s critics accused him of using disgusting language to distract attention from his private life.

Boris Johnson (pictured last night) sparked outrage by saying Theresa May’s Brexit strategy had put Britain in a suicide vest and given detonator to Brussels

Former Tory director of communications Carrie Symonds, 30, (above) has been named as the Conservative official involved in Boris Johnson’s marriage split 

It comes as Mr Johnson was pictured looking glum in the garden of his Oxfordshire home with his head in his hands as he sipped a cup of tea.

Yesterday the MP faced fresh revelations about his relationship with Carrie Symonds, who abruptly quit as Tory communications director last month.

Sources last night claimed the pair had been on a series of high-class dates in London – including at the discreet Rosewood Hotel in Holborn.

With the Conservatives descending into open warfare, allies of Mr Johnson hit back, accusing No 10 of orchestrating a smear campaign with the leak of a ‘dirty dossier’ on his love life.

But Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan, who served as Mr Johnson’s deputy, yesterday described him as an ‘irresponsible wrecker’ and vowed to stop him becoming party leader.

Sarah Wollaston, Tory chairman of the Commons health committee, yesterday became the fourth MP to warn publicly that she would resign from the party if Mr Johnson toppled Mrs May.

A senior Tory said 12 or more MPs would refuse to serve under the former foreign secretary – effectively depriving the Government of a majority.

‘Boris will never be prime minister – he would split the party,’ the MP said. ‘There are a large number of us determined to make sure he does not get onto the ballot paper whenever the leadership contest takes place.

‘If he did somehow manage to win then there are many of us – well into double figures – who would resign the party whip. He would lose the Government’s majority. He could not govern.’

It comes as at least a dozen Tory MPs are ready to quit the party to stop Boris Johnson becoming leader in place of Theresa May (pictured at Downing Street today) 

The row came as:

• Downing Street faced questions about whether Miss Symonds had been forced out of her job because of revelations about her closeness to Mr Johnson;
• Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt paraded their pro-Brexit credentials amid talk of a leadership contest;
• David Davis prepared to unveil an alternative Brexit plan based on a technological solution to the Northern Ireland border issue;
• No 10 launched a fresh charm offensive with MPs in a bid to win support for Mrs May’s Chequers plan;
• Tory MP Nadine Dorries, an ally of Mr Johnson, said Miss Symonds appeared to have become ‘collateral damage’ in Downing Street’s war with him. Mr Johnson had been on the back foot following revelations last week that his 25-year marriage to Miss Wheeler was over. But yesterday he went on the attack with an incendiary article in which he renewed his criticism of the Prime Minister’s handling of Brexit.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, he said Mrs May had allowed the Northern Ireland issue to become ‘grossly inflated’.

Yesterday he faced fresh revelations about his relationship with Carrie Symonds (pictured), who abruptly quit as Tory Party communications director last month.

He warned Brexit would fail unless she tore up the so-called ‘backstop’ agreed with the EU last December, which would keep Northern Ireland in the customs union. Mr Johnson described the Chequers plan, which would require Britain to follow a common rulebook with the EU, as a humiliation.

‘We look like a seven-stone weakling being comically bent out of shape by a 500lb gorilla,’ he said. ‘We have opened ourselves to perpetual political blackmail.

‘We have wrapped a suicide vest around the British constitution – and handed the detonator to Michel Barnier.’ 

Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, savaged Mr Johnson’s intervention and told him to grow up.

‘A suicide bomber murdered many in the courtyard of my office in Helmand,’ said the former Army officer. ‘The carnage was disgusting, limbs and flesh hanging from trees and bushes.

‘Brave men who stopped him killing me and others died in horrific pain. Some need to grow up. Comparing the PM to that isn’t funny.’

It has now been suggested that Miss Symonds (pictured right with Michael Gove) may have lost her job for being too close to Johnson 

Sir Alan said: ‘For Boris to say that the PM’s view is like that of a suicide bomber is too much. This marks one of the most disgusting moments in modern British politics. I’m sorry, but this is the political end of Boris Johnson. If it isn’t now, I will make sure it is later.’

Alistair Burt, who also served under Mr Johnson, said there was ‘no justification for such an outrageous, inappropriate and hurtful analogy’.

Home Secretary Mr Javid urged Mr Johnson to use ‘measured language in future’, adding: ‘There are much better ways to articulate your differences.’

But allies of Mr Johnson rallied to his defence. MP Zac Goldsmith said there were ‘a number of possible motives’ for Sir Alan’s attack but ‘given its author, we can be certain principles aren’t one of them’.

Mrs Dorries said Mr Johnson faced vitriol because rivals were terrified of his popular appeal.

Ross Thomson, another Eurosceptic Tory, accused No 10 of trying to smear Mr Johnson, following the leak of a ‘black book’ on him.

Drawn up by a member of Mrs May’s team during the 2016 leadership election, the 4,000-word dossier details Mr Johnson’s affairs with journalists Petronella Wyatt and Anna Fazackerly and socialite Helen Macintyre, with whom he had a love child.

It also details his sacking by former Tory leader Michael Howard for lying, his admission that he tried cocaine at university and his controversial comments during years of column writing.

Mr Thomson said: ‘What on earth are No 10 playing at? We are all Conservatives. This is gutter politics that only serves to deliver the disaster of a Corbyn government.’

Downing Street sources angrily denied that they were involved in the leaking of the document to the media.

What Boris said and how MPs responded  

Boris Johnson:  We look like a seven-stone weakling being comically bent out of shape by a 500lb gorilla. We have opened ourselves to perpetual political blackmail. We have wrapped a suicide vest around the British constitution – and handed the detonator to Michel Barnier.

Nadine Dorries: Don’t underestimate the vitriol that’ll be directed towards Boris … He delivered the Leave vote, Remainers and wannabe future PMs hate him.

Ross Thomson: What on earth are No 10 playing at? This [the leaks about Johnson’s private life] is gutter politics that only serves to deliver the disaster of a Corbyn government.

Andrew Bridgen: Boris says it how he sees it and speaks truth unto power. Boris is a great orator and that is what he’s done.

Tom Tugendhat: A suicide bomber murdered many in the courtyard of my office in Helmand. The carnage was disgusting –Comparing the PM to that isn’t funny.

Sir Alan Duncan: This [suicide vest remark] marks one of the most disgusting moments in modern politics … This is the end of Boris Johnson. If it isn’t now, I will make sure it is later.

Alistair Burt: If we don’t stop this extraordinary use of language over Brexit, our country might never heal.

Anna Soubry: Johnson would be a disaster, not just for the Conservative Party, he would be a disaster for our country.

Sexy, clever, ambitious… and barely older than his daughter: How Boris Johnson, 54, became smitten by the Conservative’s blonde PR guru ‘Apples’

By Jane Fryer for The Daily Mail 

Conservative spin doctor Carrie ‘Apples’ Symonds’s 30th birthday party – a house party thrown by well-connected friends at their family home in north London back in March – was a very jolly and well-attended affair with extremely free-flowing alcohol.

Everyone got stuck in. While the younger generation of cool Tories (including Carrie, stunning in an elegant party dress) danced the night away to Abba hits in the living room, older Cabinet ministers, including Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Home Secretary Sajid Javid, jiggled around the edges.

But perhaps most arresting was the sight of then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, 54, showing off some of his most flamboyant dancefloor moves.

‘He’s a surprisingly good dancer and he was really putting his back into it,’ reports one fellow guest.

Of course he was! He must have had to move heaven and earth (and a slew of Foreign Office commitments) to be at the party in the first place, and he was determined to make a good impression on the birthday girl.

Carrie was linked to the former Foreign Secretary after it was claimed that he had developed a ‘strong friendship’ with the blonde in the months leading up to his separation from wife Marina

Tory Party sources said Ms Symonds’ departure from Conservative headquarters had nothing to do with her relationship with Mr Johnson

Because, as it now turns out, he and Carrie (then the Conservative communications director) had already been close for some time.

On Valentine’s Day they enjoyed a romantic dinner ‘a deux’ at Rules in Covent Garden – described by a fellow diner as ‘an intimate meal and hardly anything to do with any great matters of state’ – while Boris’s bodyguards twiddled their thumbs at a nearby table.

The week before, they were photographed glinting naughtily at each other at the Tories’ Black and White Ball.

A month ago at a private get-together for Brexiteers, they arrived together, spent all evening talking to each other and then left together.

While Boris is well-versed in extra-marital affairs, friends say this time he is completely smitten. And no wonder, because Carrie – who’s barely five years older than fashion student Lara, the eldest of his four children with second wife Marina Wheeler – is nothing if not glamorous, judging by the photos she keeps posting of herself on social media.

She’s also blonde, charming (it is thought that the nickname ‘Apples’ is on account of her luscious cheeks), waspishly gossipy, infectiously good fun – particularly after a drink or three – popular with men and women and passionate about politics. And now Boris.

Ms Symonds (pictured on the bonnet of a car outside Westminster) is barely five years older than fashion student Lara, the eldest of his four children with second wife Marina Wheeler

As a friend puts it: ‘Carrie is a person for whom the word vivacious could have been invented. She’s highly intelligent, very pretty, very sexy.’

She is also, without doubt, extremely ambitious and, as it turns out, not that bothered about keeping their relationship under wraps.

So while Boris desperately obfuscated both at home (after all his affairs, he was on a final warning from Marina) and at work (constantly giving his furious protection officers the slip so the pair could meet up), Carrie was only too happy to share details of their dinner dates with friends.

At a colleague’s wedding three months ago she showed some of Boris’s friskier texts to a pal. When an official-looking car swooped up at the wedding venue soon after, her friends reportedly speculated as to whether she’d gone to join Boris for the night at Chevening, his grace-and-favour Foreign Office residence.

She was given the nickname ‘Apples’ on account of her luscious cheeks and has been described as charming, infectiously good fun, popular with men and women and passionate about politics

Her openness may have been deliberate. According to one friend, ‘Apples’ was never the sort to be ‘the one on the side’.

‘I don’t think you mess with Carrie,’ says the friend, who insists the reason Marina and Boris have finally announced their split after 25 years is because Carrie wouldn’t have put up with anything less.

‘She would have said, ‘Do the right thing or I’m not getting involved’. She’d want everything official and above board and she wouldn’t want him to be cheating on his wife or lying to his children. She’s quite moral.’

Which might sound curious given recent events, but perhaps her attitude harks back to her own childhood. Carrie herself is the product of an extra-marital affair.

Her parents are Matthew Symonds, 64, one of the founders of the Independent newspaper, and Josephine Mcaffee, 70, who was then one of the paper’s lawyers. Both were married to other people at the time.

Carrie was born in London in 1988 – just four months later her father’s wife gave birth to Carrie’s half-sister Isobel (she has two other half siblings) – and was brought up by her mother in a handsome three-bedroom townhouse on a quiet, leafy road in East Sheen, south-west London. 

A friend described Ms Symonds as ‘a person for whom the word vivacious could have been invented. She’s highly intelligent, very pretty, very sexy’

Carrie herself is the product of an extra-marital affair. Her parents are Matthew Symonds, 64, one of the founders of the Independent newspaper, and Josephine Mcaffee, 70, who was then one of the paper’s lawyers. Both were married to other people at the time

Her father provided financial assistance but, according to one friend, never seemed much of a presence in her life. ‘She talked of her mother all the time, but never mentioned him,’ he says. 

When asked by the Daily Mail about his daughter’s connection to Boris, Symonds said that he knew ‘literally nothing about this at all – I knew she was changing her job. That’s all I know.’

Carrie attended £20,000-a-year Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith, west London, where she excelled at pretty much everything but particularly sport, theatre and socialising.

Later she went to Warwick University, where she gained a first-class honours degree in theatre studies and history of art. But politics was always her passion; she joined Conservative HQ fresh from university and became a Tory press officer in 2009.

Immaculately made-up, beautifully dressed, albeit, as one colleague puts it – ‘always a bit older than her age: pearls and silk scarves, that sort of thing, and with a cut-glass English accent’ – she cut a swathe through her peers.

She worked on the successful ‘Back Boris’ campaign to re-elect Johnson as London Mayor in 2012 and, following the 2015 General Election, was appointed a special adviser to the then culture secretary John Whittingdale. 

Next came stints advising some of the Tory Party’s biggest names – Sajid Javid when he was communities secretary, Tory MP Zac Goldsmith, Amber Rudd (who was until recently Home Secretary), and the current Environment Secretary Michael Gove.

She fast won a reputation as ‘an excellent spinner who knows a story and is a great operator’.

She attended £20,000-a-year Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith, west London, where she excelled at pretty much everything but particularly sport, theatre and socialising

For several years she dated Harry Cole, a political journalist and former co-editor of political gossip blog Guido Fawkes. They were considered the ‘golden’ couple of the young cool Conservatives, but they split last year.

At about the same time, and in the wake of last year’s election, she was appointed the Tories’ communications director, and named as the UK’s second most powerful public relations professional by PR Week magazine.

She left this summer when, after tweeting endless positive comments about Boris, rumours circulated that she was too close, not just to Team Boris (she is a fervent Brexiteer), but to Boris himself. 

‘She was eased out of CCHQ by [Tory Party chairman] Brandon Lewis,’ says an insider. ‘She was director of communications under a previous chairman, and was sometimes shockingly indiscreet in her loyalty to Boris and criticism of Theresa May, and would actively promote Johnson’s interests in front of May’s.’

It is easy to see why Boris has lost his head.

As well as being young, gorgeous and feisty – on her social media feed is a glamorous photo of her dancing on a car bonnet outside Westminster in teeny floral shorts – she lives for politics.

‘She understands what it’s like for him, and what a difficult world politics can be to exist in,’ says a friend.

But as well as politics, she is passionate about the environment and animal welfare, and today starts a new job with technology giant Bloomberg, promoting clean oceans.

Marina Wheeler, 54, (left) learned of the ex-foreign secretary’s close relationship with 30-year-old Carrie Symonds after their marriage hit the rocks earlier this year 

Friends say her drive will appeal to him as much as her looks. ‘She knows what she wants, and will do whatever’s necessary to get it and won’t take any nonsense,’ says one source. ‘He’ll enjoy her being in charge. He loves a strong woman and she’ll keep him on his toes.’

What ‘Apples’ might see in 54-year-old Boris is another matter.

Was it his frenetic disco dancing? Could he be a replacement father figure? He’s certainly old enough. But friends of the pair snort at the notion. ‘He’s generally keener on fathering people than being a father figure!’

Of course, he might look a crumpled buffoon on the news, but in the flesh, Boris is fantastically charismatic and fizzes with energy.

‘He is exciting and energetic,’ says one political commentator. ‘If you’re interested in politics and you like intelligent men, then he’s your guy.’

In any event, people who know Carrie Symonds think the age gap will suit her perfectly because she’s so far ahead of most of her peers and very ambitious. ‘She’s a grown-up, she doesn’t want a boy! Together they could be quite the power couple.’

At this stage, of course, there are many unanswered and unanswerable questions. Will ‘Apples’ want children? Will Boris want more, once he’s managed to rebuild bridges with his existing offspring, that is? Will he want to marry (for a third time)? Who knows?

The only thing that’s clear is that Carrie would support any Boris bid for the Tory leadership with single-minded passion and drive, because she almost certainly fancies life at No 10 as much as he does.

These are among the findings of a Survation poll for the Daily Mail, the first official survey conducted since Mr Johnson’s divorce from Marina Wheeler was announced

 

 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk