On a brisk September morning in 2025, Londoners found themselves waiting at bus stops across the city, the familiar rumble of the Underground silenced by a widespread tube strike. The disruption was a vivid reminder of the city’s reliance on its transport workers, but it also threw a spotlight on a lesser-discussed workforce: London’s bus drivers. As reported by The Guardian, these drivers, who carry a million more passengers each day than their tube-driving counterparts, earn about half as much when factoring in working hours and holiday entitlements. It’s a disparity that has left many, like Londoner Andy Smith, questioning whether driving a tube train is truly twice as difficult as navigating London’s busy streets in a double-decker.
Yet, while the city’s commuters debated the value of public service, another former public servant was making headlines for very different reasons. Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, has been thrust back into the national conversation, not for his time in office, but for the lucrative—and controversial—career he’s built since leaving Downing Street. According to The Guardian, Johnson has raked in more than £5 million from just 34 paid appearances around the globe, averaging a staggering £147,000 per speech. His post-office activities, however, have raised serious questions about the ethical boundaries between public service and private gain.
The revelations come from a cache of leaked documents obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a US non-profit that archives data leaks. These files, as detailed by The Guardian, shed light on Johnson’s time in office and the relationships he cultivated with global power brokers—ties he would later seek to monetize. On April 26, 2022, for instance, Johnson was logged as texting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) alone in his office, following a seven-minute phone call the previous evening in which they discussed international developments, the war in Ukraine, and cooperation between their countries. Six advisers had joined the call, but the subsequent texting was a private exchange between two men wielding immense national influence.
Fast-forward two years, and Johnson, now out of office, penned a letter to the crown prince on the letterhead of his taxpayer-subsidized private office. In the March 2024 draft, Johnson wrote, “I remain a fervent admirer of the vision you have for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” He went on to explain that he had taken up a business venture and expressed his desire to explore whether his company could assist Saudi Arabia in achieving its ambitions. The correspondence, which surfaced among the leaked files, raises the specter of blurred lines between official duty and personal enrichment—especially given that the Office of Boris Johnson, like all former prime ministers’ offices, can claim an allowance from the taxpayer intended strictly for public duties.
Those commercial activities have not gone unnoticed. Johnson’s office employs three staff members, all of whom, according to the leaked data, have been involved in business dealings. The files suggest that Johnson’s part-time role at a company called Better Earth was worth £120,000 a year, plus a 12.5% stake—an arrangement that also involved several close associates, including two former Conservative ministers and an aide Johnson made a peer. Better Earth, founded by a Canadian mining investor, was pitched to Saudi Arabia as a partner in its ambitious greening efforts. “Although I now live a life of blameless rustic obscurity in Oxfordshire, I remain deeply committed to carbon reduction,” Johnson wrote in his overture to the crown prince.
But it wasn’t just the Saudis who received Johnson’s attention. The leaked files indicate he also sought to lobby Khaldoon al-Mubarak, an Abu Dhabi official who controls one of the emirate’s vast oil funds, for more than $1 billion in investment for a climate finance venture. Johnson’s partners in the firm, Bia Advisory, reportedly wanted the funds to invest in climate solutions, and Johnson had hosted Mubarak at least three times in Downing Street during his premiership. Such activities run up against the so-called “revolving door” rules, which bar former ministers from using contacts gained in government for private benefit for two years after leaving office. Johnson did seek clearance from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) for his role at Better Earth, but seemingly without disclosing the Saudi angle. Acoba granted permission with the caveat that he not lobby contacts from his government days, a restriction the leaked files suggest he disregarded.
Johnson’s defenders might argue he isn’t the first former prime minister to seek financial opportunities abroad. Tony Blair’s institute, for example, has received Saudi funding and was awarded a lucrative contract to support Prince Mohammed’s agenda. David Cameron, too, maintained ties with the Gulf, famously camping with Prince Mohammed during his stint as a lobbyist for Australian financier Lex Greensill. Yet, the shadow of Jamal Khashoggi’s 2018 murder by Saudi agents looms over these relationships. In a private event in North Carolina in April 2023, Johnson was unequivocal: “I think that, first of all, nobody should minimise what happened to Jamal Khashoggi. I hope you heard me say that loud and clear. I’ve raised it with MBS, as you’d expect.” He called the killing “clearly an unforgivable crime.” Still, just a year later, Johnson was expressing “fervent admiration” for the Saudi crown prince in his business pitch.
The controversy doesn’t end there. Johnson’s commercial activities extended to Venezuela, where he traveled to Caracas to meet President Nicolás Maduro on behalf of a hedge fund. While Johnson told Acoba the meeting was unpaid, documents in the leaked files show his office invoiced the hedge fund for £240,000 weeks before he made that claim. Such revelations have prompted calls from senior politicians to suspend Johnson’s access to the public duty costs allowance. Johnson, for his part, has dismissed the allegations, stating, “The PDCA has been used entirely in accordance with the rules,” and dismissing the story as “rubbish.”
The broader implications of these disclosures are hard to ignore. Rules like Acoba’s are designed to maintain public trust that former officials are acting in the common interest, not simply cashing in on their time in power. As Sue Hawley of Spotlight on Corruption put it, “If you have people at the top of government displaying the sense that they don’t have to live by the rules ordinary people have to live by, that percolates down.” A recent OECD study found that two-thirds of Britons believe politicians would not refuse a well-paid private sector job offered in exchange for a political favor—the highest skepticism among 30 rich countries surveyed.
Back in London, as commuters waited patiently for their buses, the contrast between the everyday labor of public service and the high-stakes, high-reward world of former prime ministers was hard to miss. While bus drivers kept the city moving for a fraction of a tube driver’s pay, and a world away from Johnson’s multimillion-pound speeches, the question of who truly serves the public—and who serves themselves—remained as pressing as ever.
Ultimately, the revelations about Boris Johnson’s post-office activities have reignited a national debate about ethics, privilege, and accountability in public life, offering a stark reminder that the actions of those at the top ripple far beyond the corridors of power.
