Last week, Boris Johnson became prime minister and it’s already the worst. He zipped by Buckingham Palace for his first private audience with the Queen, and he’s already broken protocol by revealing something the Queen said to him privately. These private audiences with the Queen are very rigid, very protocol-heavy, especially when the Queen is meeting with a new prime minister for the first time. Considering that’s the main part of the job, I don’t have an issue with the Protocol Police getting snippy about it – it’s far more important to maintain certain standards when it comes to the head of state and the prime minister of the nation, as opposed to the Protocol Police being judgy about a duchess’s nail polish.
I don’t know every piece of prime minister protocol, but I feel safe with saying that only SPOUSES are allowed to join their prime minister husbands/wives at the palace to meet the Queen. A prime minister can’t bring his girlfriend, his jumpoff, his mistress, or whatever. Spouses only. Which means that Boris Johnson couldn’t bring his much-younger girlfriend Carrie Symonds to the palace. Only the Daily Beast is trying to make it sound like the Queen banned Symonds out of some kind aversion to infidelity. From the Daily Beast:
Centuries of tradition celebrated by Britain’s ruling classes have been upended by the election of a new prime minister who is a twice-married serial philanderer with a live-in girlfriend. For the first time, an unmarried partner will be moving into the prime minister’s official residence in Downing Street. Boris Johnson’s living arrangements are unlikely to have much impact on his electoral chances, but they do mark his partner out as an interloper in the eyes of Britain’s head of state. When Johnson was formally invited to form a government by the Queen at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday, Carrie Symonds was conspicuous by her absence. Johnson’s predecessors—dating back decades—all went to the palace accompanied by their partners.
Symonds, who is more than 20 years younger than Johnson, refused to shy away from the snub. When Johnson pulled up to No. 10 in a silver Jaguar, she was standing front and center among his backroom staff in a striking pink floral dress. Royal-watchers predict that she will be absent, again, when Johnson is invited for the traditional prime ministerial visit to the Queen’s summer residence at Balmoral in Scotland.
“The girlfriend will not be welcome,” royal biographer Penny Junor told The Daily Beast. “When Charles was with Camilla before they were married, she wasn’t seen at any of the royal palaces, and if Camilla was at Highgrove, the Queen wouldn’t be there. To put it simply: The Queen does take a dim view of adultery.”
Even Meghan Markle wasn’t allowed to stay at Sandringham when she accompanied her fiancé Prince Harry, the queen’s grandson, to her first royal Christmas in 2017. They stayed at nearby Anmer Hall to spare royal blushes. If the Queen has ensured traditional rules apply to her own son and grandson, it’s probably best not to ask what she thinks of Johnson’s love life.
He has been married twice—the second divorce is still working its way through the courts—and he has had more than one high-profile affair. We don’t know how many children he has in total. Johnson definitely had four kids with his second wife, Marina Wheeler, whom he married a few weeks after his first divorce came through.
Over the past week, I’ve been studiously avoiding the coverage about Boris Johnson’s private life because I really don’t want to know. I’ve heard enough – the serial philandering, the “love children,” the still-foggy reports of a woman screaming in his home… it all paints a picture and I don’t want to know more. All that being said, I don’t think Symonds’ absence from the palace was simply about her being the mistress-turned-girlfriend. I think the Queen’s rule for politicians, aristocrats and members of her own family is the same across the board: she’ll only meet with SPOUSES in any kind of official capacity. It’s not just the Queen deciding to pick and choose whose infidelity she finds disturbing. That would be hypocritical considering three of her four children are divorced and had extramarital relations.
Carrie Symonds is supposed to be 31 years old. Really?? This is why you don’t sleep with racist old men with political power. Those f–kers age you. Update: My comment about her age was honestly just surprise on my part – I didn’t realize she was so young until I looked it up. I guess my point is… why is this young woman attaching herself to a racist old man twice her age? It’s awful.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, WENN.
Because he is still technically married to Marina Wheeler and he is not engaged to Carrie. Carrie also does not officially live at No 10, so in essence Alexander De Peffel Johnson has indicated that she is not his ‘official’ spouse.
I am guessing this is what promoted the row between them after she had helped him so much with his image revamp. If i were her, I would run NOW.
What Mignionette said: Boris Johnson is still married to someone else.
As PM, aren’t you also a high ranking member of the CoE? (Like, after the king and the archbishop?) Because that probably also can be a reason why the Queen can’t officially invite the gf/side-piece and why she can’t live at Downing St
No, not at all. The role of PM is purely secular, and we’ve had many PMs who are not CoE.
There are ancient laws which in theory ban Roman Catholics from holding any role where they “advise the Queen” but they’ve never been implemented afaik and it’s purely theoretical whether they even could be implemented. It’s never come up because we’ve never had a Roman Catholic PM (Blair is Roman Catholic but didn’t officially convert until he was out of office).
Carrie does – controversially – live with Boris in Downing Street. They chose to live at number 11 rather than number 10 because 11 is much bigger. It’s something of a tradition albeit a relatively recent tradition for PMs to reside at 11 rather than 10. Tony Blair started this ‘tradition’ because he was married with 4 kids, so it made sense to swap houses with Gordon Brown who was childless and so didn’t need a huge house. Actually Boris has been heavily criticised for hogging the larger house when it’s just him and his girlfriend, and forcing Sajid Javid (who has four children) to live in the much smaller house.
Ok thanks! I remembered the “no catholic rule” and how Blair only converted after he left because of it but didn’t bother to look more into it, mostly because who Johnson is married or partnered to is the least of my worries considering all the other things that are wrong about him. I know the monarch has to be a bit stricter about rules because of its role in the CoE (and I know that rules are bent too), but since Johnson was going the meet her for the purpose of being asked to form a government, there was no reason for his partner to be invited, it was a business meeting not a celebration of his nomination.
Yes, with his reputation she should run. But he will now be obliged to marry her and produce another baby Johnson to add to his other four, five or six kids , nobody is sure
I’m pretty sure it’s six, if talk in London is any indication. It’s definitely at least 5.
I didn’t know Trump had a brother in England. My apologies to my fellow British readers. Seems like rotten elected officials is spreading. 🙁
Neither did I. 🤡
John Oliver did a brilliant piece on BJ (how appropriate!) last night. He did a side by side comparison of BJ and Dump in it.
Oliver also goes on about how the messy hair and buffoonery is all on purpose, to distract (sound familiar) from what he’s actually doing.
This. The disruptor he has in the background is a la his buddy Bannon, Dominic Cummings.
TheOG … Love it, hadn’t seen John Oliver’s piece yet…. 😀 Thanks.
I am just here to say that it was slightly nauseating to see these two twits side by side on the Celebitchy page. Can you at least do some creative photoshopping and swap their hair? I need something to lighten the horror of them both.
I have said it before and I will say it again. There is no way a woman whose hair looked like either of these people would ever be elected to office, let alone the highest in their country. I don’t understand how these buffoons get away with it. The Time of the Buffoons.
Btw I hope that Marina uses this precarious position he finds himself in to negotiate herself a killer deal as payback for the two children he fathered behind her back during their marriage.
I thought he had seven children in total (four with his wife, and three extramarital). Is it only six?
Although, honestly, who really knows what the actual tally is…
To my knowledge there are six. He only acknowledges one of the children publicly and that was bc of a court order. Both children I am aware of are protected by NDA’s. Alongside the two definite there are also a few terminations along the way.
He is not the right man to lead a country, far too reckless. We’re screwed.
No one knows how many children he has.
HB, not even Boris knows.
Cos they would break all the plates in the palace?
UNITED KINGDOM IS F@#%$%^. And the same way I feel about the United States will be the same way I feel about Great Britain. I HAVE NO SYMPATHY. YOU MADE YOUR BED, NOW LIE IN IT.
In what way did we make our bed? We didn’t elect him! Well actually correction, 0.1% of the population elected him. I don’t want to lie in this bed!!
In both countries half the population made a different kind of bed, though. And they still need to lie in the bed the other half, the idiots, made. I do have sympathy.
We literally did not have an election and did not vote for he next prime minister. So it’s not a half and half thing as there was no election
You’re right, I was just too tired to explain it all to Kiki.
Additionally, more Americans voted against Trump than for him (popular vote was lost by 3 Million votes). The idiot minority made our bed.
Kiki, you may want to look up a bit of information about how this PM was chosen. The country did not vote on it.
Completely ignoring the massive, strategic, international forces that deliberately made these things happen (Russia, idiots at Facebook, Steve Bannon).
I didn’t make the bed! I didn’t vote for Trump.
I think the whole world is f**** up.. It’s Trump in the US, BJ in the UK, Bolsonaro in Brazil destroying the Amazon river and forest,, Maduro in Venezuela, the list goes on…
Wrong. Russia helped the orange fat man win. I don’t have to lie in the bed I didn’t make because I didn’t vote for him, thanks very much.
People: we do what we can. In the case of the US, that means get Allllll of your democrats out of the house to vote. Drive little old ladies to the polls. If you live in a swing state, spend all of Election Day doing that. None of us are going to convince anyone of anything any more. It’s all about the ground game. Barack Obama knew that. Things haven’t changed that much. Trump’s racism is all about motivating his base, so motivate yours and do what you can to counteract the forces none of us can do anything about.
It’s not our fault that half the US is a bunch of idiots! I wish those of us who are sane could secede and elect who we want.
He’s gross. The hair I just don’t get but I appreciate the warning, I can’t see it without thinking Trumpesque and that says all I need to know.
As for the flavor of the day, she looks 31. Why do we immediately go in on a woman’s looks?
I think she’s also pretty cute. I mean, I don’t follow her at all, so I have no idea what kind of person she is – she could literally be satan incarnate for all I know. But I like her hair, and her dress. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Apropos of nothing, she looks a little like Princess Beatrice.
“Carrie Symonds is supposed to be 31 years old. Really?? This is why you don’t sleep with racist old men with political power. Those f–kers age you.”
Symonds was the youngest victim of the notorious Black Cab Rapist, John Worboys, and she waived her anonymity to campaign against his release from prison last year. That kind of life experience can take its toll and that shit can age you, too.
yeah, +1 I thought that line was a bit much. Boris Johnson is scum, but Carrie has gone through hell and back with what happened to her. Plus, I actually don’t think she looks ‘old’ for 31 tbh. Plus, even if she did, it’s not really cool to go after her appearance guys. That was unnecessarily harsh imho.
And even if she hadn’t had that life (which my god, that poor woman)- I don’t even think she looks THAT old. She doesn’t look like an 18 year old, but my god. The kind of pressure we put on women to constantly look a certain way is exhausting. And then the people who get work done get dragged for getting work done. It’s a no-win all around, and it’s getting more and more inexcusable in this day and age.
Completely agree. She looks her about age. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And if she looked way older? There’s nothing wrong with that either. It’s maddening that looking young for your age is being held up as some sort of “how good are you?” purity test for women now.
And I just turned 29. I think she looks older than I do, but not by much at all. But I’m hitting the point where I’m starting to get really self conscious about aging, and seeing people that look perfectly fine get called out for looking old or whatever doesn’t help. I can tell myself it doesn’t reflect my worth all day long, but every once in a while I do succumb to the “oh god, if she looks bad, what do I look like” kind of mentality.
I think we should all be a little kinder to ourselves as well as other women. The amount of pressure there is out there for people both in and out of the public eye genuinely isn’t healthy.
This site does have a particular obsession with women looking “old for their age”, and if so, implying that they’re somehow sinful to look that way. We’re all going to get wrinkles and have parts that sag, and growing and aging is far better than the alternative.
It’s horrid for men to attack women for daring to get older or not look 18 any more, I don’t think as women we should add to it by implying that a woman who survived hell on earth looks “old” because of who she’s dating. If she looks “older”, which I don’t see at all, maybe it’s because of the stress of a horrific sexual attack.
I totally agree.
Its frightening that we are at a place where any evidence of expression on a woman’s face is treated like a badge of shame. She’s doing a shy smile, (gasp!) it creates wrinkles around her mouth! Must stop smiling!
We are being pushed to become serene, plastic sexbots.
I gasped when I saw that line. First, she looks 31. Second, she looks incredible considering the absolute hell she’s been through. Waiving her privacy just to protect any future victims is incredibly brave.
“Waiving her privacy just to protect any future victims is incredibly brave.”
Exactly, Kitteheels! And her reward for putting herself out there is criticism from strangers on the internet for not looking like a senior in high school at 31. JFC. It is ridiculous.
She is 31 and looks it. I am 48, and (unfortunately?) look it…so I guess I should go blow my head off as it will only get “worse” from here and I have nothing to live for, I guess?
Yeah. I don’t know anything about her but she looks 31.
Why would any woman? Just why? There truly can’t be that much money in the world. Why?
My exact thought as well. Just, no.
Pay. Power. Prestige. Or maybe she really loves him. 🤷♀️
Don’t underestimate the allure of power, prestige and social standing.
I wonder if the protection he provides and him being older makes her feel safe after what she went through as a very young woman.
I’m not faulting her for the trauma that she has experienced in her life. It’s tragic and horrifying and no person should ever go through that.
But there are plenty of people who have experienced a great deal of trauma in their lives, who don’t throw their lot in with notorious racists and generally all-around reprehensible scum like Boris Johnson, who seek to make life miserable for victims who are perhaps not as lucky as her in life.
Her position here is simply not a neutral one. And if I were inclined to theorize from an armchair, I’d wager that she isn’t with him because she feels safer, but rather because he is a boor and a lout and treats her poorly and she believes on some level that this is what she deserves in a relationship.
Have you seen him in interviews? He actually has quite a charming personality. . .
I don’t think she looks “old” at all-I was surprised she is in her 30s’, she reminds me of the blonde girl from iCarly but prettier.
I don’t think she looks “old” either & speaking of “old,” given all the comments here – older women who embrace their age can look absolutely beautiful. Truly (not in her “don’t make her feel bad” way).
I’ve been noticing this more & more – the radiance that comes from certain older women & I admire it.
I’m going to dismiss this obsession we have with youth & start actively cultivating my respect for age & maturity. . . I think it’s something we’re missing in these times.
The offer is still open: spare bedrooms for Brits down here in sunny Australia. And I do mean sunny. It was a balmy 20°C today – smack-bang in the middle of Winter. 🌞 🐨
Sorry you would have to get rid of the snakes and spiders first!
Why did Hope Hicks steam Trump’s pants?
In answer to the headline – probably because it is a fairly recent relationship and he is still married to his wife.
Watch John Oliver’s break down of this idiot; it’s all calculated.
I second this. John Oliver had a great take down of Boris last night. It is a must watch.
Yes, exactly. This is second hand, but I’ve heard that he staged the whole zipline thing.
His entire persona is a lie.
Yep watched it, now I wish he had included Boris’ messy history of affairs and outside the marriage kids. That also paints a completely different picture of the bobbling silly Brit. His current girlfriend looks younger to me, she looks mid-20’s. I’m sure Trump can’t wait to meet her and I can’t wait for her to put him in his place.
This is a formal meeting to acknowledge that he is now the prime minister, it isn’t a meet and great. A spouse wouldn’t attend.
That was my thought too. Her not being there isn’t a problem. The previous way is the abnormality.
It’s a meeting where a head of state invites a Prime Minister to form a government. Why a plus one, whether a spouse,a mistress,a rebound or whatever , would be needed ?
They should seize the opportunity to make this the new normal.
Only the person elected is enough.
Indeed. We don’t have photos of Blair’s wife, or Cameron’s wife, or May’s husband, and so on, in that same first meeting.
The former German President Gauck has been with his mistress/partner for more than 20 years. She’s the one that accompanied him everywhere – including visits with the Queen. Technically though he is married to someone else and said repeatedly he won’t ever divorce the mother of his children, even though she isn’t his partner any longer and hasn’t been for 30 years. So the Queen does break protocol and has done so before. Excluding Johnson’s mistress IS a slight on her part and not only protocol.
The German president is the head of state, the equivalent of the Queen. Boris Johnson is the head of government, his counterpart in Germany is the Chancellor, Angela Merkel. It’s different.
While I don’t agree with his politics, my understanding is that Boris Johnson has immense charm. He’s meant to be very similar to Bill Clinton in that he can make someone he’s just met feel like that person is the most fascinating person in the world. The problem is that I’m not sure there is anything under the charm.
She’s had a rough time of things – a boyfriend who makes her feel special is the least she deserves. I just hope Boris doesn’t do his usual thing of making 3 or 4 women feel the same way at once.
I have met them both (briefly, I am not important) and I promise you that Bill Clinton’s charm is as the sun and Boris’s is as a tiny stub of a candle.
🙂
Can you imagine the uproar if Theresa May had divorced or separated from her husband and then moved a 30 year old toy boy into Downing Street? I actually think given her background Carrie has Daddy issues, and Boris is a kind of father figure. Women who had absent fathers often go for older men.
Boris spells trouble, he cares about nothing but himself and has carefully plotted to fulfil his lifetimes ambition of being PM. Everything will go up in flames one way or another but bombastic Boris as usual will manage to wriggle his way out of mess as he has done countless times before. I hugely recommend reading ‘Just Boris’ by Sonia Purnell, it confirms everything l thought about him.
By the way, l am very sure that although they have much in common like selfish ambition and womanising and casual racism, Boris definitely despises Trump, and is just using him for now. Boris is probably already taking notes for his own memoir.
Definite Daddy Issues: she was born after her mother, a well connected lawyer, had a relationship with her father, the founder of The Independent newspaper, while he was married to another woman – I don’t think he ever left his wife. She has a a half sister who is only a month or so different in age from her.
I don’t know of it’s like that in the UK, but in most of Europe people don’t care about a politicians personal life, so it might have been fine if Theresa May moved a toyboy into the official residence. I wouldn’t be able to tell you how my country’s prime minister’s wife looks like, and I barely know anything about the President’s husband.
I’ve heard she is quite ambitious & herself, has quite a forceful personality. Increasingly, he is speaking publicly about his commitment to causes that are very important to her (animal welfare, climate change). . .
So, you know, perhaps there is more to her & their relationship than “daddy issues” . . .
People need to remember that Carrie is the mistress turned girlfriend – he will still very much married when their affair started and was subsequently exposed by the press, which is when his wife kicked him out (he’s been living with Carrie in her flat since then). Surviving an encounter (she was lucky in that he did not attack her, she had a sense of danger that told her not to drink the champagne and thats what saved her) with a convicted rapist does not mean we should white wash things. She knew Boris was married and what his reputation with women was when she got with him. It takes 2 to commit adultery.
Yes. Complicates things, doesn’t it. . .
In 2019 we still call a woman “his mistress?”
When the man is(was?) married to someone else, yes.
Racism does indeed age you. Anyone who’s looked at a recent photo of Brigitte Bardot would know as much.
LMAO 😂
I can’t imagine this will end well. Francois Hollande moved in his former mistress turned girlfriend Valerie Trierweiler into the Elysee Palace only for the press to find out two years later he was cheating on her with Julie Gayet (I think they’re still together last I checked). And we all know how that went.
I did not feel sorry for Valerie when all that went down since she was the other woman for YEARS while Hollande stepped out on his former partner Ségolène Royal, the mother to all his children. Not sure why Valerie didn’t expect the same thing to happen to her.
But my guess this young lady probably has a lot of issues, especially considering she was the victim of rape (?) so she has clearly been through a lot.
Corbyn isn’t much better. My condolences, British readers.
Bold move on her part to stand outside, I’d say.
Even if she had been invited, I think it’s a very wise move for her to hold back & keep a low profile.
Prominent politicians, ideally, give off a sense of tradition & stability. That seems to be what works, what people want, doesn’t it? Having a girlfriend (who may or may not be around in 6 months time, let’s be honest) on your arm isn’t the way to go.
I was surprised to see her in full view of the cameras, though. Realistically, I suppose, if she hid away, they’d probably be ravenous for news about her . . .