Boris Johnson has hit the headlines (again) for claiming he never said anything about Turkey during the EU referendum – even though there is plenty of evidence he did.
But during the same speech on Friday, the former foreign secretary also raised eyebrows by claiming he wasn’t a nationalist.
Speaking at the JCB factory in Staffordshire, Johnson’s first major public appearance since Theresa May’s humiliating Commons defeat over her plan for leaving the EU, he urged the government to focus on the “issues that drove Brexit”.
At the event, the Uxbridge MP said: “I am not a nationalist, if by that you mean I’m a xenophobe, or someone who deprecates other countries and cultures.
“Absolutely not, far from it.”
He added that he is cosmopolitan and that his ancestors come from many places.
So Johnson is claiming he can’t be a nationalist because he would never deprecate other countries and cultures?
We beg to differ. Here are eight times he did just that – on occasion even attacking whole continents.
1. He once referred to “watermelon smiles” and “piccaninnies”
Both phrases are racist insults for black people, and Johnson was later forced to apologise for the comments.
The insults were used in column for the Daily Telegraph, when he was criticising then-prime minister Tony Blair and his trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002.
Johnson, who was at the time MP for Henley, said: “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; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness.
“They say he is shortly off to the Congo. 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.”
2. There was that time he described the whole of Africa as “a blot”
In a blog for The Spectator entitled ‘Africa is a mess, but we can’t blame colonialism’, Johnson appeared to show his pride in Britain’s colonial past, while at the same time insulting the whole continent of Africa.
He said: “The continent 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 any more.”
In 2016, he referred to the continent of Africa as “that country”.
3. He suggested the people of Papua New Guinea indulge in cannibalism and chief-killing
In another column for the Telegraph, this time in 2006, he said: “For 10 years we in the Tory party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing and so it is with a happy amazement that we watch as the madness engulfs the Labour party.”
He was later forced to apologise, saying: “I meant no insult to the people of Papua New Guinea, who I’m sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity ... My remarks were inspired by a Time Life book I have, which does indeed show relatively recent photos of Papua New Guinean tribes engaged in warfare, and I’m fairly certain that cannibalism was involved.”
4. He had to be stopped from reciting a nostalgic poem about British imperialism in Myanmar
In 2017, while on an official visit in his role as foreign secretary, Johnson began a colonial-era Rudyard Kipling poem in front of local dignitaries while inside the Shwedagon Pagoda, the most sacred Buddhist site in the former capital Yangon.
Johnson’s impromptu recital of The Road to Mandalay was so embarrassing that the UK ambassador to Myanmar, Andrew Patrick, was forced to stop him, telling him it was “not a good idea” and “not appropriate”.
The video of the conversation was shared widely and he was accused of “incredible insensitivity”.
5. He suggested the Turkish president had had “relations” with a goat
Johnson won £1,000 for his dirty limerick about Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – not a man known for his sense of humour – but defended himself when criticised.
The poem read:
“There was a young fellow from Ankara
“Who was a terrific wankerer
“Till he sowed his wild oats
“With the help of a goat
“But he didn’t even stop to thankera.”
Johnson later said: “If somebody wants to make a joke about the love that flowers between the Turkish president and a goat, he should be able to do so, in any European country, including Turkey.”
6. He weighed in on Chinese culture
In 2005, he wrote yet another less-than-flattering Telegraph column, saying ”…compared with the old British Empire, and the new American imperium, Chinese cultural influence is virtually nil, and unlikely to increase….Chinese culture seems to stay firmly in China. Indeed, high Chinese culture and art are almost all imitative of western forms….”
7. He suggested Kenyans have an “ancestral dislike” of Britain when criticising Barack Obama
Johnson was furious when Obama, who was still the US president at the time, said he thought Britain should remain in the EU.
His response was to call the president “part-Kenyan” with an “ancestral dislike” of Britain.
He was in turn accused of dog-whistle racism for the comments, but later said he had “no regrets” about what he said.
8. He said women who wear burkas ‘look like letterboxes’ or ‘bank robbers’
Johnson sparked outrage last year, even from within his own party, when in – yep, you guessed it – an article for the Telegraph, he said expected women to remove face coverings when talking to him at his constituency MP surgery.
He said schools and universities should be able to take the same approach if a student “turns up...looking like a bank robber”.
He added that the burka was “oppressive” and it was “absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes”.
An independent panel investigated the comments and cleared him of wrongdoing, despite Theresa May calling at the time for him to apologise.