Boris Johnson 'worried about money on prime ministerial salary of £150,000'

Boris Johnson is reportedly "worried about money" after his earnings halved when he took on the job of running the country.

The Prime Minister was said to be earning in excess of £350,000 a year. But he gave up his newspaper column with the Daily Telegraph, thought to be worth £275,000, to receive his prime ministerial salary of £150,000.

Friends and colleagues of the Prime Minister told the Times Mr Johnson is "worried about money" and that pressures from running the country during a pandemic is taking its toll on the 56-year-old.

Sources close to the Prime Minister noted that he is still supporting four out of his six children, he has been through and expensive divorce, and is said to be concerned about the cost of a nanny for his son, Wilfred.

"He’s always worried about money, he has a genuine need to provide for his family, all of them, and I think that does worry him," the Times quoted one friend as saying.

Another friend of Mr Johnson's told the newspaper: "Boris, like other prime ministers, is very, very badly served. He doesn’t have a housekeeper — he has a single cleaner and they’re worried about being able to afford a nanny.

"He’s stuck in the flat and Downing Street is not a nice place to live. It’s not like the Élysée or the White House where you can get away from it all because they’re so big.

"Even if he or Carrie want to go into the rose garden they have to go through the office.”

Mr Johnson and his fiancée Carrie Symonds have access to the flat above Number 11 as a benefit in kind.

Other sources claimed Mr Johnson's recovery from coronavirus had been "really hard".

The Prime Minister returned to the Commons in April after he tested positive for the virus on March 26. He had spent two nights in intensive care following his diagnosis.

“At the beginning he was not allowed to go to Chequers at weekends because of the ban on moving from one place to another," said one source.

"The illness itself and having a baby was absolutely exhausting.”

The Standard has approached Downing Street for comment.

The reports come after Mr Johnson told reporters on Friday that the UK is “now seeing a second wave coming in”.

Public Health England (PHE) warned that data published on Friday could be a sign of “far worse things to come”, as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said cases are thought to have almost doubled in a week to 6,000-a-day in England.

During a visit to the Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre construction site near Oxford, Mr Johnson told broadcasters: “Obviously, we’re looking very carefully at the spread of the pandemic as it evolves over the last few days and there’s no question, as I’ve said for several weeks now, that we could expect (and) are now seeing a second wave coming in.

“We are seeing it in France, in Spain, across Europe – it has been absolutely, I’m afraid, inevitable we were going to see it in this country.”

He said a second lockdown was the “last thing anybody wants” but said the current measures would need to be kept “under review”.

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