Boris Johnson, the Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), does not know what the Commonwealth flag looks like.
Appearing before the Commons foreign affairs committee today, Boris told MPs how Brexit presented an “very exciting prospect” to strike free trade deals with Commonwealth nations, such as Australia, that were “bounding ahead” economically.
“I yield to no one in my admiration of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,” he said, emphasising the second half of his department’s name.
However asked by Tory MP Andrew Rosindell (who loves flags) if that meant he would commit to replacing the EU flag with the Commonwealth’s once the UK left the EU, Boris was stumped.
Boris said sheepishly: “I am going to have to own up, Mr Rosindell, I am unaware of the exact configuration of the Commonwealth flag. What does it look like?”
To help Boris out, Tim Barrow, the political director of the FCO, drew a picture of the flag.
“That’s a very good drawing,” Boris said, holding up the picture. “That’s a lovely flag. It looks like a lovely flag but I’m not going to commit now to flying it everywhere.”
Boris also accidentally slammed Theresa May’s attack on remain voters at a select committee hearing today.
During the meeting, the foreign secretary asserted that everyone was a “citizen of the world”, unaware his comments came just one week after the prime minister denounced such people as “citizens of nowhere”.