Prime Minister Boris Johnson cost GQ magazine £4,000 in parking tickets while working there as a motoring journalist, his former editor has said.

Dylan Jones, who edited the fashion and lifestyle magazine for more than 20 years, employed Mr Johnson to work as motoring correspondent in 1999.

“There soon appeared to be something of a problem however, as the managing editor started to get sent rather a lot of parking tickets,” Mr Jones wrote in The Sunday Times.

“And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. In Boris’s own words, they started accumulating ‘like drifting snow on a windshield’.”

Mr Jones added: “I once worked out that, over the decade he worked for GQ, Boris had cost us about £4,000 in parking tickets.

“But then he’d also written more than a hundred incredibly funny motoring columns, so I figured it was worth it.”

Mr Jones, who was awarded an OBE in 2013 for services to the publishing and fashion industries, added that “interestingly” Johnson never incurred a speeding ticket.

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“I’ve got a pretty good idea why,” he said.

“When the cars were delivered to his house in Islington, the car company always made a note of the mileage, something that is standard practice.

“The mileage would also be noted when they came to pick them up again. And on more than one occasion – OK, on many, many, many occasions – the mileage was precisely the same. So I leave you to draw your own conclusions.”

The prime minister continues to be at the centre of partygate, with former Conservative minister Steve Baker telling The Daily Telegraph that lockdown breaches could impact votes for the Tories in the upcoming May local elections.

However, Mr Johnson remains confident he will still be in power in the autumn.

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