Boris Johnson cannot live on wine and party food alone

Lady Bamford, whose husband runs JCB diggers and generously donates to the Tory party, understood that Boris Johnson couldn’t live on wine and party food alone during the lockdowns. She fixed it for her butler to hand-deliver 30 boxes of food from her upmarket Daylesford Organic grocery business to the prime minister’s Downing Street pad.

Astonishingly, the Johnsons claim to have met the £27,000 cost of these deliveries themselves – and the money has helped to push Daylesford into profit for the first time. Latest figures at Companies House show it reporting a turnover of £42.7m in the year to March 27 2021, £9m up on the £33.6m in sales generated the year before. The upturn generated a £9,023 profit – its first profit since it began trading in 2003.

For all her husband’s billions, Lady Bamford still happily availed herself of £831,300 from the coronavirus job support scheme, as well as £66,100 from Rishi Sunak’s “eat out to help out scheme”, not to mention £627,600 in business rates relief.

Still, her ladyship has £68m worth of ongoing losses sitting on the balance sheet as at the date of the accounts. A note on the accounts adds that she is happy to “continue to provide support for the foreseeable future”.