Downing Street has denied allegations that an MP walked in on Boris Johnson and his then-girlfriend Carrie Symonds "in flagrante" in 2018, The Independent has reported.
The government source told the outlet that rumors about the incident were “sordid and untrue”. Allegations that Northern Ireland Minister Conor Burns caught the then-Foreign Secretary Johnson and Carrie in his office have surfaced in the past couple of days.
However, the Downing Street source assured The Independent that Burns is “adamant that nothing remotely physical was going on” with "no physical contact".
Earlier, The Independent reported that Burns had "flagged up" the couple's relationship to Foreign Office officials after he found them “having a glass of wine together”. Burns felt their relationship was "the one to watch".
After hearing from Burns about the delicate incident, then-Foreign Office aide Ben Gascoigne and other staffers blocked Johnson's bid to appoint Carrie as the Foreign Office chief of staff with a salary of £100,000 a year.
“After Conor saw them together in his office, Boris’s staff knew it could be dangerous if the wrong people found out. They decided his private life was his own business but stopped him making her [Carrie] his chief of staff because it would have increased his exposure," a source told The Independent.
Boris and Carrie, who was the Tory Party’s head of communications at the time, made their relationship public in 2018 shortly after Johnson parted ways with his second wife Marina Wheeler. It is widely believed that their affair began when Johnson was still married to Wheeler.
Johnson married Carrie in 2019 shortly after the two moved into Downing Street, making her the first unmarried partner of a prime minister to reside at No. 10.