Boris Johnson’s sister has criticised his behaviour, saying it was “not helpful” to blame parliament for his Brexit difficulties, and claiming that he used the Commons despatch box as a “bully pulpit”.
Rachel Johnson said his attack on parliament was a “strongman gambit” designed to “whip up” support.
She said: “I love him very much, and he is a different person in the Commons.”
Johnson, a prominent Remain supporter, told BBC Radio 4′s World at One: “What we saw yesterday and today in the Commons is a very divided country.
“But to say that parliament is at fault is not helpful, because parliament is also divided, and it’s reflecting the division in the country.”
She suggested that the prime minister’s performance on Wednesday evening was the “kind of strongman gambit that has been proved to work”.
“I think that what we are seeing is an executive that is so keen to deliver Brexit in any shape or form, to get the country out of the EU, to deliver up on that promised land, that they will do anything to justify that end.”
Asked what could be behind the strategy, she said: “It could be (senior aide) Dominic Cummings advising the prime minister to be extremely aggressive and to face down opposition from all sides of the establishment in order to secure his position as the tribune of the people.
“It could be coming from my brother himself, he obviously thoroughly enjoys being prime minister.
“It also could be from – who knows – people who have invested billions in shorting the pound or shorting the country in the expectation of a no-deal Brexit. We don’t know.”
Johnson also said her brother was wrong to suggest that the best way to honour the memory of murdered MP Jo Cox was to deliver Brexit.
Appearing on The Pledge, to be aired on Sky News tonight, Johnson described the prime minister’s language as “particularly tasteless”.
She said: “I think it was particularly tasteless for those who are grieving a mother, MP and friend to say the best way to honour her memory is to deliver the thing she and her family campaigned against – Brexit.
“It was a very tasteless way of referring to the memory of a murdered MP, who was murdered by someone who said ‘Britain first’, obviously of the far-right tendency, which is being whipped up by this sort of language.”
Cox’s widower Brendan tweeted that he “felt a bit sick at Jo’s name being used in this way.”
So far, Downing Street has refused to issue an apology.
The Johnson family has been split by Brexit, with the prime minister’s brother Jo quitting his ministerial post earlier this month in protest at the direction the government was taking.
He said there had been an “unresolvable tension” between “family loyalty and the national interest”.