Boris neighbour who recorded row ‘has received death threats’

The man who recorded Boris Johnson‘s row with Carrie Symonds has been receiving death threats and has not returned home, another neighbour has said. 

Playwright Tom Penn informed police – and the Guardian newspaper – after overhearing the Tory frontrunner’s heated argument with his girlfriend on Friday. 

Nearby resident Wayne Moseley, 47, said Mr Penn had received death threats through the door, predicting it would be hard to return to his usual life with Mr Johnson as a neighbour. 

‘You can’t come back and live here and think it’s going to be peace and harmony – you’re going to bump into each other, he has to go past Boris to go up the stairs,’ he said. 

Two other neighbours said they had not seen Mr Penn or his wife Eve Leigh since the news broke. 

Mr Moseley, speaking outside his home in Camberwell, south London, said Mr Penn had yet to return home. 

‘I’ve seen him once driving by in his car but he hasn’t come in – he couldn’t move out so soon, his stuff is still upstairs,’ he said. 

‘Any vans parking up here would have been seen by me so he hasn’t moved out – he’s just playing it long because he knows he has death threats.’

Defending Mr Johnson, he continued: ‘He could be living in some gated community but he’s chosen to stay here.

‘When he gets out of his car at night he doesn’t have bravado or 100 security guards to get to the door – he walks over and talks to me for a couple of minutes.’

‘I could have been anyone at that time when we first met, he wasn’t startled, he wasn’t scared.’ 

Miss Symonds was reported to have told Mr Johnson to ‘get off me’ and ‘get out of my flat’ during the furious row on Friday morning.  

Scotland Yard said they were alerted to the situation by a caller who ‘was concerned for the welfare of a female neighbour’.

After officers attended it was deemed ‘there were no offences or concerns’ and there was no cause for police action.  

Neither Miss Symonds nor the Tory leadership favourite have spoken in public about what happened. 

Mr Penn has said it was in the public interest to publicise the row. 

‘I believe it is reasonable for someone who is likely to become our next prime minister to be held accountable for all of their words, actions and behaviours,’ he said.   

Mr Johnson has since been engulfed in a further row over a picture of the couple apparently sitting happily together.  

The photograph appeared to be taken from nearby bushes, but speculation has grown that Mr Johnson’s campaign put out the picture in a bid to show their relationship was going strong.   

No photographer or agency has claimed credit for the picture. 

Yesterday Mr Johnson repeatedly refused to answer questions about the photograph, insisting that ‘I don’t comment on that kind of thing’. 

Asked where the photograph had come from, Mr Johnson said: ‘The longer we spend on things extraneous to what I want to do … the bigger the waste of time.’  

Friends have insisted the couple ‘love each other very much’ and want to get married ‘when the time is right’. 

Nonetheless, the row has delivered a blow to Mr Johnson’s leadership ambitions, days after he and Jeremy Hunt reached the final round of the race to succeed Theresa May. 

In a bid to revive his campaign he gave a series of interviews and appointed ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith to his campaign.  

Betting odds drifted against Mr Johnson, although he is still the heavy favourite.  

Political rivals have called on Mr Johnson to come clean about the incident, with Liam Fox saying he needed to avoid the issue becoming a ‘distraction’.