Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, became a father for the seventh time this Thursday (9). He and his wife, Carrie, announced the birth of a girl, the couple’s second child, in a London hospital. The child’s name has yet to be released.
“Mother and daughter are doing very well. The couple would like to thank the brilliant NHS maternity team [sistema de saúde britânico] for all the care and support,” a spokeswoman for the couple said in a statement.
Asked about possible paternity leave for Boris, a spokesman for the British leader said “he will spend some time with his new family and will continue to uphold his responsibilities as prime minister.”
Boris, 57, and Carrie, 33, were married in May of this year. A month earlier, they had their first child together. Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson is named after the child’s great-grandparents and the nurses who attended to the prime minister when he was admitted with Covid-19 last year.
Boris got married for the first time at the age of 23, to a colleague at the university. He divorced five years later, and his personal and sexual life is the delight of the British tabloids. Less than two weeks after the divorce, he married lawyer Marina Wheeler, with whom he had studied as a child. Within five weeks, the couple’s first child was born.
Outside of marriage, Boris had a four-year affair with a colleague at the British magazine Spectator, of which he was director. In 2006, British tabloids wrote about an alleged affair with a Guardian journalist, whom he employed shortly thereafter.
After three years, still married to Marina (the divorce would only come in 2018), with whom he had two sons and two daughters, Boris fathered a girl with an art consultant and, in 2013, he had an affair with American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri (neither of them denied it).
The birth of the seventh child comes in a particularly troubled week for Boris. On Wednesday (8), an advisor to the prime minister resigned from her post after the release of a video in which she appears laughing at a party that would have been held in Downing Street, seat of government, during the 2020 Christmas season, when in-person celebrations prohibited due to sanitary restrictions.
Allegra Stratton, who at the time was Boris’s press officer, resigned and “deeply apologized” to the British, adding that she would feel regret for the rest of her days. The prime minister also apologized for the episode during a session in parliament, but added that his staff had repeatedly denied that there had been celebrations.
Ridiculed by the press and vilified within his own party, Boris saw his credibility further threatened by introducing new restrictions to try to contain the advance of the omicron variant in England.
On Wednesday, the prime minister announced that masks will be required in most internal areas from Friday (10) and that the vaccination certificate will be mandatory in closed or crowded places from next week.
The measure will impact, for example, the presence of the public in stadiums to watch competitions. Fans will have to prove that they have received both doses of vaccine, or test negative for Covid.
Boris was also blamed on Thursday for a renovation of his Downing Street apartment with undeclared funds from a private donation.
The Electoral Commission, which regulates the accounts of political parties, fined the prime minister’s caption 16,200 pounds (BRL 121 thousand) for failing to report the donation of 67,800 pounds (BRL 499 thousand) received in October 2020. The Conservative Party will have to pay an additional 1,550 pounds (R$11.4 thousand) for the wrongdoing.
Attacked by the opposition, Boris told parliament in April that he had respected all the rules and personally paid for the reform, without specifying that the money came from a later refunded donation.
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