Two officers from MI5 visited Downing Street in 2020 to brief Boris Johnson on the national security risks of giving Evgeny Lebedev a seat for life in the upper house of Parliament.
The then prime minister argued that the life peerage could go ahead because the MI5 officers’ security concerns were about Evgeny Lebedev’s father Alexander, a KGB-officer-turned-oligarch who has since been sanctioned by Canada and Ukraine for supporting Vladimir Putin’s war.
As the first case of a prime minister dismissing national security advice to make an appointment to the House of Lords, Evgeny Lebedev’s peerage has led to accusations of patronage, cronyism, and calls to reform the upper chamber. The case also represents Boris Johnson’s unserious approach to national security during his premiership, according to one of his former senior national security advisers in Downing Street.