Speeches Former PM earned £5m from 34 paid appearances

Boris Johnson earned more than £5m from less than two years of paid speeches after standing down as prime minister, leaked files suggest.

- David Pegg Jessica Elgot

Transcripts and itineraries demonstrate the globe-trotting nature of the former prime minister's new life as a public speaker. He made 34 paid appearances between leaving office in September 2022 and May 2024, according to a file in the leak.

He spoke at a conference on leadership in Delhi, a blockchain symposium in Singapore, in a public lecture series in Lagos and at a summit on green hydrogen in Abu Dhabi. Each earned Johnson $350,000 (£259,000).

Some of the speeches were delivered in public or have previously been reported on. Others, such as the former prime minister's bizarre turn as the headline act at the 50th birthday party of a German pharmaceutical company boss, have not.

The details are contained in a leak of files from his private office that were obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets and seen by the Guardian.

Some of the speeches may give rise to questions of potential conflicts of interest.

For example, Johnson was paid $250,000 to give a speech in California in May 2024 to an American private equity firm, Clearlake Capital. Two years earlier, in May 2022, Johnson's government had authorised the £2.5bn sale of Chelsea football club to, among others, Clearlake. A source at the company, however, said the two events were entirely unconnected.

Other speeches will raise awkward questions about whether he has been prepared to treat audiences to views or information that a former prime minister would ordinarily be expected to keep confidential, in exchange for cash.

Audiences were treated to Johnson's views on Barack Obama ("the most inert, invertebrate president we've had for a long, long time") and Vladimir Putin ("like the fat boy in Dickens, he wants to make your flesh creep"), as well as private anecdotes about the late Queen Elizabeth II, including a time he said she advised him to talk to birds.