Rishi Sunak has struggled to defend Boris Johnson after he compared Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion to the UK’s vote to leave the EU.
The prime minister has sparked an angry backlash after he said that “like the people of Ukraine”, the UK had “chosen freedom” in the 2016 referendum.
Johnson has been urged to apologise for the remarks, which were branded “insulting” and “distasteful” by Labour.
Asked about the comments on Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday, Sunak said he did not think the conflict in Ukraine and the Brexit vote were “analogous”.
However, he insisted the PM Johnson did not mean to directly link the two events.
“Clearly they are not directly analogous and I don’t think the prime minister was saying that they were directly analogous either,” he said.
“People will draw their own conclusions. People can make up their own minds.”
The chancellor instead pointed to Johnson’s record on the Ukraine crisis, such as imposing sanctions on Russia.
“I think no-one can doubt that the prime minister has taken a lead globally in standing up to Putin’s aggression,” he said.
“There is nothing crass about that, he has taken a lead internationally in assembling a coalition of countries to inflict maximum economic pain on Putin and has galvanised opinion and I think he deserves enormous credit for that.”
Johnson made the comments in his keynote address to the Tory spring conference in Blackpool.
He told the audience: “I know that it’s the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples.
“When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don’t believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners.
“It’s because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself.”
Labour’s Rachel Reeves demanded Johnson apologise for the “distasteful” and “insulting” comparison.
The shadow chancellor told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme: “It is utterly distasteful and insulting to compare the fight for freedom and the aggression of the Russian state to the decision to leave the European Union.
“It is insulting to the Ukrainian people who are fighting for their very freedom and their very lives, and it is insulting to the British people as well.
“If the prime minister didn’t mean that analogy, he shouldn’t have made it and he should take back those words and apologise to the Ukrainian people and the British people for those crass remarks he made yesterday.”
And she told the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme: “It is shameless and the prime minister should withdraw those comments.”