Boris Johnson’s personal affairs can’t be off limits when they’re this entangled with his public actions

Is Boris Johnson entitled to a private life? Of course he is, and in many important respects even the most unruly elements of the media have behaved as what he might describe as a “model of restraint”.

The Johnson children have been left alone. His estranged wife, who has a life and career of her own, has been kept out of the coverage for the most part. A number of his past liaisons, their circumstances and consequences, have been kept confidential. Even the stories about Carrie Symonds have been remarkably straightforward. She, too, has work and ideas of her own, and is not some mere adjunct to Project Boris.

When she has found herself to be the story, as with the police being called to a noisy incident with Mr Johnson in her flat, it was certainly not at her instigation.

That episode, however, and some of the other revelations in recent weeks, were worthy of public attention. This is because they are cases where private behaviour may have had an impact, or may yet have an impact, on public policy and public funds.

It doesn’t really matter if the mayor of London, as he was, nips out on his bicycle to have “technology lessons” with a model-turned-entrepreneur. That detail, though, is part of legitimate enquiries as to his relationship with Jennifer Arcuri.

Did he help her take part in a trade mission which she would not otherwise have been invited? Did his acquaintanceship with her make any difference with respect to various public funds for her business ventures? Would mayor Johnson have turned up to speak at various events she featured in if she was not a friend?

These are all questions that are subject to four separate enquiries and Mr Johnson has rightly pledged to co-operate with them, while stressing that he complied with the rules.

Rather different are the allegations made by the journalist Charlotte Edwardes, about groping, since denied by the prime minister. It may be recalled that such incidents helped end the ministerial career of Sir Michael Fallon and Damian Green, and have damaged the reputations of others, just as they should.

It is possible, at least, that they would qualify as a form of assault and, in any event, it betokens a creepy attitude that inevitably infests individuals’ view of the one half of humanity that happens to be female. Mr Johnson’s various writings, not always “woke”, would tend to confirm his old fashioned outlook.

It is only necessary to imagine what might happen if, in some satirical parallel universe, similar things were said of Jeremy Corbyn. What would the press make of an allegation that he had arranged for some political activist to travel the world with him? Or that he had channelled public money to Palestinian causes? Or if he allowed his hands to wander beneath the table at a workshop on a new Clause IV? He would be destroyed.

When Mr Johnson was running for the Conservative party leadership much was made of his past and he refused consistently to answer questions about it, using the formula that he did not wish to talk about matters concerning people he loves. A fair answer, but one that will not wash when his personal conduct raises questions about his public actions, his integrity and, in particular, where rules and laws may have been broken.

They are then just as worthy of journalistic enquiry as, say, the unlawful advice he offered to the Queen on the prorogation of parliament, and his threats to defy the law. Even in his position he is not above the law.

Mr Johnson would be well-advised to make two public statements making clear his side of things on the Arcuri and the Edwardes stories, a full and frank account that will at least suggest some willingness to face up to realities – the most important of those realities being an impending general election where the last thing that he and his party needs is for him to be dogged by these and perhaps yet more controversies.

Even his friends in the press will find it difficult to ignore fresh evidence of misconduct. Besides, no one wants an alleged groper for a PM.