THE Wallpapergate furore and reflections on how it impacted on Boris Johnson and the Government raged on in the newspaper comment sections.

The Daily Mail

Jan Moir said she had some sympathy for Carrie Symonds as Wallpapergate rolls on.

“The price of having her walls lined with gold scrolling ferns is that she has been painted as a grasping opportunist who would spend £1,000 on a designer tea cosy, if only she could get some mug Tory Party donor to foot the bill,” she said. “ I hold no scented candle for the Prime Minister and his fiancée, who have both behaved with a remarkable lack of common sense over the refurbishment of their Downing Street flat. And that is putting it mildly. But is she deserving of so much of the blame?”

She said she imagines living in Downing Street must be some form of hell.

“The point is that Carrie was just carrying on, unchecked and running wild among the parrot-print fabric, thinking she was doing nothing wrong.

“The sin here is not in the extravagance of the coverlets, but in the disgrace of the cover-up. “

The Independent

Mark Steel asked how the Prime Minister spent £200,000 on improving a flat.

“Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds had to redecorate the Downing Street flat, we understand, because it was a “John Lewis furniture nightmare”,” he said. “Because John Lewis is slumming it. When the payment for this work was questioned, the couple did what anyone would do when you’ve overspent by £60,000 – they got the bill paid by a Lord.”

He said Boris knows that every day he does something far worse than redecorate a flat while expecting someone else to pay.

“If he was brought down over this, he’d be like an actor who spent all his life playing Hamlet, but went down in history as the man in the advert for webuyanycar.com.”

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee said the drip, drip damage of Brexit never stops and a “breathtaking £800 roll of gold wallpaper distracts our eye.”

“A prime minister who caused tens of thousands of bodies to pile high, while apparently fixing taxes for pals and contracts for cronies, has our eyes out on stalks,” she said. “No one knows how deep in slurry Boris Johnson can sink and still swim out.”

She said that wallpaper and lies may bring Johnson down, but Brexit is the ‘crime against the country for which he will be for ever damned.’

“Riots and the fall of Arlene Foster imperil the peace agreement in Ireland, and the UK’s breakup is on a knife edge,” she added.

“A necessary trigger will come to hand soon for Labour to lead the charge against the bad Brexit deal.

“Well before the next election, Labour will lead the cause of guiding Britain towards a return to the single market, and the safer haven of a Norway solution.”