How ‘Great Exhibition’ texts triggered a Boris Johnson corruption row

​Boris Johnson is facing another Tory sleaze storm as newly published messages reveal that he promised to consider plans for a new “Great Exhibition” backed by a Tory donor from whom he was seeking funding.

The prime minister discussed the proposal during a WhatsApp chat with millionaire Conservative peer David Brownlow in which Johnson also requested help with paying for a refurbishment of his Downing Street flat.

What do the texts say?

During the WhatsApp exchange, in November 2020, Johnson described his grace-and-favour residence as “a bit of a tip” and asked for “approvals” so that his interior designer, Lulu Lytle, could “get on” with revamping the flat.

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Signing off, Johnson wrote: “Ps am on the great exhibition plan Will revert.”

Brownlow replied: “Of course, get Lulu to call me and we’ll get it sorted ASAP! Thanks for thinking about GE2 Best wishes David.”

The “great exhibition plan” refers to a proposal by Brownlow and the Royal Albert Hall, for which the peer is a trustee, for a “modern recreation of the festival organised by Prince Albert in 1851”, said The Times.

Two months after the WhatsApp chat, on 18 January 2021, Brownlow met then culture secretary Oliver Dowden at the Albert Hall to “discuss plans for Great Exhibition 2.0”, which a government source indicated was a “private initiative”, according to The Guardian.

A Downing Street spokesperson yesterday stressed that meeting stakeholders and hearing such proposals was “normal practice” for ministers and that the Great Exhibition idea was “referred to the relevant department, considered and ultimately not taken forward by the government”. Instead, Festival UK, formerly known as the Festival of Brexit, would be going ahead in 2022.

However, the spokesperson “could not explain the difference between that event and the great exhibition plan”, said The Guardian.

Link to Johnson’s flat

The WhatsApp messages “emerged only after they were passed to the Electoral Commission by Brownlow” last month, said The Times, and “were not provided” to Johnson’s independent ethics advisor, Christopher Geidt, who was tasked last spring with investigating how the No. 11 flat refurb was funded.

The messages have now been made public as part of newly published letters exchanged by Johnson and Geidt in which the PM offered his “sincere and humble apologies” for not handing them over during the initial probe, which concluded last May.

Back then, Geidt cleared Johnson of any wrongdoing, finding “no evidence” that Brownlow had told the Tory leader that “he had personally settled” costs reported to be up to around £58,000 for the redecorations.

But the WhatsApps have “cast doubt on Johnson’s original claims to Geidt that he was unaware who was paying for the work”, The Times said.

In his letters to the PM, Geidt said that the emergence of the messages did not alter his “fundamental assessment” that Johnson did not break the ministerial code. But the ethics advisor added: “Had I been aware of the missing exchange, I would have had further questions and drawn attention to it in my report.

“More crucially, I doubt whether I would have concluded, without qualification, that at the point when the prime minister became aware [of who was paying for the flat refurbishment], he took steps to make the relevant declaration and to seek advice.”

Corruption allegations

The messages between Johnson and Brownlow make for “uncomfortable” reading for Downing Street, wrote BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley.

“Some might question why the prime minister brought up a project backed by Lord Brownlow – in a message where he was also asking for more money to be made available from a trust he controlled,” Eardley said.

The charge from Labour is that Johnson allowed Brownlow to effectively buy access to the culture secretary in order to get his Great Exhibition plan off the ground.

Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said Brownlow appeared to have had such access “because he was paying” for the refurbishments and that if Johnson knew where the cash was coming from then “that is corruption plain and simple”.

“No one should be able to buy access or exchange wallpaper for festivals. Boris Johnson has serious questions to answer,” she added.

The WhatsApp messages have also revealed an “intimacy” between Johnson and Brownlow, said Alistair Graham, a former chair of the Commons Committee on Standards in Public Life.

Brownlow was clearly “well aware of what was going on in Downing Street”, Graham told The Guardian. “It raises the question about how Johnson wouldn’t have known he was providing real cash for the refurbishment.

“It would certainly provide an incentive for his idea, getting close to the prime minister in order to get it off the ground, by helping him with his refurbishment. It adds to the unsavoury nature of the whole exercise.”

Downing Street’s response that there was “nothing untoward” about Brownlow’s meeting with Dowden was echoed by Tory minister Paul Scully this morning.

“Lord Brownlow made his own approaches and it wouldn’t have just gone to the prime minister, but the important thing is it’s not gone ahead,” Scully, the small business minister, told Times Radio.

“So there’s not nothing untoward that’s happening out of, you know, a few lines in a WhatsApp.”