Well, the day has finally come. After endless calls to step down, a vote of no confidence, and over 50 MP resignations Boris Johnson is resigning. The decision has been a very (very) long time coming, and Twitter users have been quick to highlight the PMs hypocrisy in clinging on until the bitter end.
‘As I write these words, Gordon Brown is still holed up in Downing Street,’ Johnson criticised in a (now viral) Telegraph column about the Labour leader who was in a semi-similar position in May 2010. ‘He is like some illegal settler in Sinai desert lashing himself to the radiator or like David Brent haunting The Office in that excruciating episode when he refuses to acknowledge that he has been sacked,’ he continued.
‘Isn’t there someone – the Queen’s Private Secretary, the nice policeman on the door of No 10 – whose job it is to tell him that the game is up?’ Ah, the irony…and undertones of xenophobia. Famously, this isn’t the only controversial comment Johnson has made throughout his career.
So, to commemorate his eventual exit from Downing Street, we’re looking back at some of the worst foot in mouth moments the PM has had. Strap yourselves in, it’s about to get wince-inducing.
These Are Boris Johnson’s Worst Quotes Of All Time
‘Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3’ – During the 2005 election.
‘Orientals… have larger brains and higher IQ scores. Blacks are at the other pole’ - An article published in the Spectator whole he was editor, 2008.
‘[Africa] may be a blot, but it is not a blot upon our conscience. The problem is
not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge anymore.’ – His article in the Spectator, 2002.
‘I’m down with the ethnics.’ – Speaking live on the BBC Asian Network, 2008.
‘[Malaysian women went to university because they] have got to find men to marry’ – Said while talking to the Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, 2013.
‘It is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.’ – Written in his Telegraph column, 2018.
‘If a constituent came to my MP’s surgery with her face obscured, I should feel fully entitled… to ask her to remove it so that I could talk to her properly. If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber then ditto: those in authority should be allowed to converse openly with those that they are being asked to instruct.’ – Written in his Telegraph column, 2018.
‘Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this [golden age of the empire] out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods’ – Said before the referendum, 2016.
‘[Working class men] If he is blue collar, he is likely to be drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless, and perhaps claiming to suffer from low self-esteem brought on by unemployment’ – Written in the Spectator, 1995.
‘No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird. What a relief it must be for Blair to get out of England. It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies’ – Written in the Telegraph, 2002.
‘You know, £60m I saw was being spaffed up a wall, you know, on some investigation into historic child abuse’ – On LBC, 2019.
‘I don’t know what a pint of milk costs. So what?’ – During a Newsnight interview, 2013.
‘If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog’ – In his book Friends, Voters, Countrymen, 2002.
‘Labour’s appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it’ – The Spectator, 2000.
‘Why don’t you f*** off and die?’ – To his driver – 2015.
‘It is outrageous that married couples should on average be forking out £1,500 in tax to fund the single mothers' desire to procreate independently of men…Something must be found, first, to restore women's desire to be married. That means addressing the feebleness of the modern Briton, his reluctance or inability to take control of his woman and be head of a household’ – The Spectator, 1995.
‘[Single mothers are] ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate… Families on lower incomes the women have absolutely no choice but to work, often with adverse consequences for family life and society as a whole – in that unloved and undisciplined children are more likely to become hoodies, NEETS, and mug you on the street corner’ – In his book, Have I Got Views For You, 2006.
‘Just pat her on the bottom and send her away’ – The Spectator, 2005.
‘I look at Libya, it’s an incredible country…Bone-white sands, beautiful sea…The only thing they have got to do is clear the dead bodies away’ – To the Conservative Party while he was Foreign Secretary, 2017.
‘If you can’t turn the clock back to 1904, what’s the point of being a Conservative?’ – To the Guardian, 2016.