Downing Street has confirmed members of Boris Johnson's team intervened after a newspaper published a report that he wanted to hire his now wife for a plum Foreign Office job.
Early copies of The Times on Saturday included claims that Mr Johnson had sought to appoint Carrie Symonds, as she was then known, as his chief of staff when he was Foreign Secretary.
But the story disappeared from later editions of the newspaper. The claim had previously been reported in Tory peer Lord Ashcroft's biography of Mrs Johnson.
