Downing Street flatly denies Italian newspaper report that Boris Johnson was in Perugia

DOWNING STREET has denied what it says are “completely false” claims that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in Perugia, Italy, earlier this month.

The complaint was contained in an article in the Italian newspaper La República, which quotes an airport worker as saying that Johnson was at the airport “on Friday, September 11 or Thursday, September 10.”

The article also cites an official statement from the local airport last week saying that Johnson had landed at the airport “in the last few days.”

The airport statement was in the context of a list of famous people who had recently arrived at the airport, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Barcelona footballer Luis Suárez.

Yet this morning The Sun’s political editor Harry Cole reports that Perugia airport will retract its statement that Johnson traveled through the airport last week.

Johnson has previously traveled to Perugia in recent years, where he has been the guest of Russian billionaire Evgeny Lebedev.

Italy is on the UK’s list of corridor counties, which means that people returning from there to England do not need to isolate themselves.

The story has been trending across the UK.

Source: Twitter

Regardless of this, Downing Street has emphatically denied that Johnson has recently been to the central province of Italy.

“This story is completely false. The prime minister has not traveled to Italy in recent months. Anyone who publishes these claims is repeating a falsehood, ”the spokesperson said.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast this morning, Grant Shapps MP also said that “as far as he knows” Johnson was not in Perugia.

“Not that I know of, but I don’t follow his movements for hours. But not that I know of. Like I said, I don’t know. But to be clear, that would be a travel broker in any case. No, as far as I know, ”he said.

The solution to the mystery of where the prime minister was on the weekend of September 11 is that on September 12 @BorisJohnson and @carriesymonds they were baptizing their son Wilfred in Westminster Cathedral. “You can confirm with the priest!” I was told. So it couldn’t have been in Italy then. But how does https://t.co/i1I8Kwkzvs

– Robert Peston (@Peston) September 21, 2020

There were some questions about where Johnson had been the weekend before last (September 12-13), but this morning it was reported that he had been present at the christening of his son Wilfred in Westminster Cathedral.