Who’s Boris Johnson’s real boss?

Dominic Cummings used to say that Boris Johnson – even after he became prime minister – referred to his old paymasters at the Daily Telegraph as his “real boss”. So will his “real boss”, which paid him £270,000 for one ropey column a week, soon be welcoming Johnson home?

The Guardian recently suggested that as a certainty, but Mandrake wonders if anyone there still reads the Telegraph. The paper has been extremely hostile to Johnson in its own pages, saying repeatedly that he is an electoral liability to the Tories with “no idea what to do next”. Perhaps this is because, of the brothers who owned the paper, it was the now-deceased Sir David Barclay who was Johnson’s champion, and emphatically not his fellow proprietor and twin, Sir Fred.

When the late literary agent Ed Victor fixed up a series of meetings between Sir David and I to discuss the idea of a biography, Sir David was forever taking calls from his friend “Boris”. With Fred it was a different story. One insider told me: “He always saw through Johnson, thought his twin was crazy to fall for all his hard-luck stories and pay him so much, and didn’t care for his personal morality. Fatally, Johnson took David’s side – rather than Fred’s – in their big acrimonious row about money and bugging that ended up in the courts.”