Boris Johnson faces yet another claim of sexism after it emerged he wrote that children of working mothers were “unloved and undisciplined” and might “mug you on the street corner”.
In his 2006 book Have I Got Views For You, the prime minister said mums were “socially gestapoed into the workplace” and it led to them raising “unloved and undisciplined children” more likely to commit crime.
The PM, who at the time was the Tory MP for Henley, also compared “male non-graduates” with “illiterate brickies” and suggested the group was “resentful of all these hoity-toity female graduates”.
It comes after a 1995 Spectator written by Johnson resurfaced last week, in which the PM railed against the “appalling” growth of the number of single mothers who were “uppity and irresponsible” for getting pregnant out of wedlock.
In that article, he also criticised “feckless” working class men and described the children of single mums as “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate”.
In his 2006 book, Johnson said working mothers had children who were “more likely to become hoodies, NEETs [someone who is ‘not in education or training’] and mug you on the street corner”.
He said: “The result is that in 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.”
He went on: “In the last 30 years an ever-growing proportion of British women have been ‘incentivised’ or socially gestapoed into the workplace, on what seems to me to be the dubious assumption that the harder a women works the happier she will be, when I am not sure that is true of women or anyone else.”
Johnson also wrote about women not getting married.
He said: “The result is that we have widening social divisions, and two particularly miserable groups: the female graduates who think men are all useless because they can’t find a graduate husband, and the male non-graduates who feel increasingly trampled on by the feminist revolution, and resentful of all these hoity-toity female graduates who won’t give them the time of day.
“What is the answer, my friends? I don’t know. We could try fiscal incentives for heterogamy. We could have plot-lines in soap operas in which double-first girls regularly marry illiterate brickies.”
Labour’s shadow education secretary Angela Rayner called the comments “disgusting”.
She said: “It is obvious that Boris Johnson has nothing but contempt for women and working-class people.
“For him to speak about us in such a disgusting manner shows just how out of touch he is. It is clear he only ever stands up for the privileged few.”