Boris Johnson ‘quit PM race over risk to £10m earnings’ - sources

Boris Johnson would have forfeited earnings of at least £10m a year from speeches and sales of his memoirs if he had fought a leadership battle against Rishi Sunak and lost, according to informed sources in the entertainment industry, who believe financial considerations played a part in his decision to pull out.

Since he resigned in July, Johnson is known to have been in talks with entertainment and talent agencies including Endeavour, run by US businessman Ari Emanuel, and the Harry Walker Agency (HWA), one of its subsidiaries.

Johnson’s earning potential is said by some of those he had been in talks with before Liz Truss’s resignation to have been put at about £20m a year.

Most Tories, including Johnson supporters, believe the main reason behind his withdrawal from the contest to replace Truss a fortnight ago was that he was being told he risked destroying the Tory party, and his reputation with it. However, some of his allies were surprised and felt let down by his decision.

“There were a lot of people upset with Boris,” one senior Tory figure said. “They’d backed him publicly only to see him pull out at the last minute. They didn’t understand why.”

The Observer has been told that people associated with Emanuel made it clear to Johnson that had he lost against Sunak, his appeal to global audiences, and therefore a good deal of his earning power, would disappear. It is understood that the talent industry believed his value would have dropped by at least half.

Last night a spokesman for Johnson said financial reasons played no part whatsoever in his decision and were “totally irrelevant”. The spokesman repeated what the former prime minister said in a statement when he withdrew. In it Johnson said he had “sadly come to the conclusion that this (taking the fight to the membership) would simply not be the right thing to do. You can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament.”

The implication was that even if he had won in the country, the party would have been split because more MPs would almost certainly have backed Sunak in the indicative vote.