Boris Johnson has railed against “the turnip ghosts of Project Fear” in a stridently pro-Brexit newspaper column, his first for six months.
Johnson, a former journalist, previously used his weekly column in The Daily Telegraph as a crucial platform for setting out his positions on various issues.
In February last year, he used it to announce he would back Leave in the Brexit referendum, having written another pro-Remain draft of the same article before deciding which way to go.
The column ceased shortly after he was appointed Foreign Secretary.
But on Monday, his first column in The Telegraph since July appeared.
On typical form, he attacked “the turnip ghosts of Project Fear”, the EU’s “undemocratic law‑making” and the “insane” requirement to insure off-road quad bikes that was, he claimed, looming.
He wrote about the mini-quad bike he bought to drive around his garden with his family (”It roared with a proper trail bike roar... We gave it some welly, I can tell you”) and then gave away to a neighbour who will, Boris said, now have to buy insurance.
He said this was because of an EU Court of Justice ruling, that followed an accident in Slovenia when a man was knocked from a ladder by a tractor reversing into a barn.
This man’s legal action was struck down in Slovenia as the tractor’s insurance only covered it when it was being used as a “mode of transport”.
But the EU court ruled that a vehicle’s insurance had to cover any use of it “that is consistent with the normal function of that vehicle”.
Boris said this could mean Britons would have to insure a range of vehicles including his old quad bike.
“What has it got to do with the so‑called Single Market, whether I tootle around my garden on an undersized quad bike? Absolutely nothing,” he wrote.
“Which is why it is such good news that this undemocratic law‑making will soon be over. 2016 was an amazing year, in which the British people voted for freedom.
“If many people had not been genuinely scared by the turnip-ghosts of “Project Fear”, I think the majority for leaving the EU would have been larger still.”
He added: “[The ruling] to mean anything from dodgems to Segways to scooters to your granny’s motorised bath-chair, and it certainly means my old quaddie.”
The Telegraph ran an explainer alongside Boris’ column, which said of the quad bike ruling: “Redefining which vehicles need to be vehicles covered could potentially require motor insurance for such things as: dodgem cars, sit-on lawnmowers, mobility scooters, forklift trucks and racing cars.”
It added: “The implications are still being worked out at a national level. It’s quite possible that Britain will have left the EU before that happens.”
On Twitter, one person defended the notion of insurance for vehicles that can injure people, including quad bikes.