Alexander....the truth

No, not the Macedonian warrior king but the politician Alexander Johnson, who calls himself Boris.

For some time now newspapers have wanted to publish news of a child he fathered with an art dealer, but they were subject to a gagging order. The Court of Appeal has now ruled. The Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Dyson, said:

‘The core information in this story, namely that the father had an adulterous affair with the mother, deceiving both his wife and the mother’s partner, and that the child, born about nine months later, was likely to be the father’s child, was a public interest matter which the electorate was entitled to know when considering his fitness for high public office.’

'It is fanciful to expect the public to forget the fact that a man who is said to be the baby’s father, and who is a major public figure, has fathered a child after a brief adulterous affair (not for the first time).

‘The mother accepted in cross-examination that any woman who embarked on an affair with the father was “playing with fire” and that such an affair was bound to attract “very considerable media attention”.’

Now, I don't want to be too old fashioned. I know that people stray; relationships, which once seemed watertight, fall apart, but I do think that a person's conduct of his or her private life is relevant when the electorate consider 'fitness for public office' (and Johnson wants a much higher office than that he currently holds). I might think, in fact I do think, that a man who treats his marriage vows in such a cavalier way might treat in similar fashion the undertakings he makes to me as an elector. This is at least the second time he has done this, on another occasion, it is said, paying for the woman to have an abortion. We are not talking about him sitting down with his wife and deciding that they should go their separate ways (despite having children of their own); we are talking about him cheating. His horrified wife threw him out of the family home when she discovered. It is as if Mr Johnson, like Leona Helmsley who said 'taxes are for little people', thought these vows were something for others, perhaps his wife, to obey. It looks as if he thought it was beneath him.

That is why it is right that this has come out and that is why I would not vote for Mr Johnson, or a party led by him.