Boris Johnson’s babies: A final farewell to Thatcher’s Victorian Family Values
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Mike Savage/REX/Shutterstock (5016776o)
Boris Johnson MP in Bat
Lashings All Stars vs House of Commons & Lords cricket match, Maidstone, Britain – 30 Aug 2015
Carrie Symonds has given birth to a child who father is reliably informed to be Boris Johnson. The couple are not married, but so what?
As a lifelong socialist I’ve never supported the institution of marriage, but in a market capitalist society it is necessary to understand that it is meant to be part of the way the financial world works. These days, civil partnerships can provide a way around that.
Boris Johnson has (at least) six children and that is largely a matter for him and the partners he had them with. Certainly the lives of the children are of no public interest unless they themselves decide otherwise.
Its not possible to escape a wider perspective on the family here.
Mrs Thatcher promoted the idea of Victorian Values which definitely involved those related to family. While many on the left might, I’d suggest accurately, reflect that the main value involved here was hypocrisy, Thatcher did sack Cecil Parkinson in 1983. He was a Cabinet Minister who fathered a child with Flora Keays while still married to another woman.
Johnson seems to represent a very different set of Tory values.
His first marriage to Allegra Mostyn-Owen ended in divorce in 1993 when the first of four children to Marina Wheeler was due. Johnson married Wheeler, a top ranking lawyer, and has only recently divorced her following his partnership with Carrie Symonds.
In the meantime he also fathered a child with Helen Macintyre in 2009, details of which were officially revealed after an Appeal Court ruling in 2013. It had resulted in Johnson being temporarily booted out of the home he shared with Marina Wheeler.
Its not the Tory Party of traditional values (arguably as above that was largely an ideological construct anyway).
I wouldn’t judge but a lot of the media do judge working class families with numbers of children, particularly if they require financial support.
That is perhaps where Johnson’s activities do meet the public domain.
He is reported to have fathered a child with right-wing journalist Petronella Wyatt but after informing her that he would not financially support the new baby she had a termination.
Johnson does, as far as is known, support his children which has certainly involved public school fees.
He has been paid a considerable salary by the Daily Telegraph (obviously not currently) and produces books for which he, again reportedly, gets sizeable advances on a regular basis. It is thought that at least some of his recent absences were about finishing a book he had been paid to write.
As a Tory PM Johnson will know that everything comes with a cost.
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