Boris Johnson was left squirming in a BBC interview as he was forced to defend being a liar.
The former prime minister was appearing on Radio 5Live in an attempt to drum up interest for his memoir, ‘Unleashed’.
Presenter Matt Chorley told him there was “one word that comes up” in most of the messages sent in to him by the channel’s listeners.
“It begins with ‘l’,” he told Johnson. “Do you want to guess what it is?
“It’s liar. Lots of people think you’re a liar. Are you a liar?”
The ex-PM, who was forced to resign in 2022 after dozens of his ministers resigned, replied: “No. And I think that if ... you know ... whether it’s the bus, which in fact was the bus of truth.”
That was a reference to the infamous Vote Leave bus from the 2016 Brexit referendum, which claimed that leaving the EU would save the UK £350 million a week that could be spent on the NHS instead.
Chorley told him: “You admit in your book that that was wrong.”
Johnson claimed he wrote that it was an “under-estimate”, but the presenter then hit back: “No you don’t you say in the book that the real figure was much lower.”
After Johnson said that was “rubbish”, Chorley replied: “I’ve read your book, and you said it was more like £170 million.”
Growing more irate, Johnson said: “That is the net figure that the UK was sending to Brussels to be spent by the EU on projects in the EU. The rest was to be spent by the EU on projects in the UK with no control from the UK, right?”
As Chorley then tried to move on, the former PM angrily said: “That’s the problem. You accuse me of being a liar, and when I actually come back with the truth you don’t want to hear it.”