Boris Johnson’s trip to see troops in Iraq last year left Foreign Office officials picking up his personal bar bill, arranging his last-minute requests for sightseeing, and blocking his attempts to visit the “front line”, according to diplomatic emails.
The correspondence, published under freedom of information laws, shows officials struggling to accommodate the mayor’s demands and discussing efforts by Number 10 and other Whitehall officials to restrict his plans.
At the end of the visit in January 2015, the Foreign Office had to chase City Hall for payment over “costs related to alcohol purchases” run up by the mayoral delegation, even though his office was told that these would have to be settled in cash before he left.
Asked about the size of the bill, a spokesperson for the mayor said: “The mayor had always intended to settle what was a private drinks bill but an administrative oversight meant that the bill was not settled on his departuWhen Johnson arrived for the visit, he demanded access to the “frontline”, rather than just a training camp for local Peshmerga forces, prompting the UK official organising the visit to write an urgent email to the Foreign Office asking permission to refuse the request.re. The FCO brought this to the attention of the mayor’s office soon afterwards and the mayor personally paid the bill immediately.”British consulate officials organising the trip wrote of having just over three weeks to organise Johnson’s visit, which one claimed was “cooked up” by Nadhim Zahawi, a Tory MP of Kurdish heritage. Zahawi, the MP for Stratford-on-Avon, has since taken a job as chief strategy officer with Kurdistan oil explorer Gulf Keystone Petroleum, which pays an annual salary of £240,000.
In one email, an FCO official reveals No 10 initially tried to block Johnson from visiting British troops training local forces in Kurdistan. Downing Street subsequently relented as long as the trip was “done in an appropriately sombre manner”.
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