The MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip is banished to the backbenches, at least for now, after both candidates to replace him – Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – ruled out giving him a cabinet seat. But Mr Johnson himself, who has never shied away from the public eye, recently refused to rule out some form of political “return”. And there has already been some speculation that he could have another “Trump-style” tilt at the Tory leadership in the future. Like Donald Trump, his political career to date is littered with blunders – some more disastrous than others. From insulting entire cities, countries and cultures, the Athenian disciple has offended many during his time in the limelight. Here the Independent looks back at some of Mr Johnson’s most damaging and humiliating blunders. Boris Johnson was known for blunders before he became prime minister – and they just kept on coming (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
1. “Let the bodies pile up” during the pandemic
Mr Johnson’s former chief aide, Dominic Cummings, claimed that as Covid spread across the country during the pandemic, the Prime Minister had said “let the bodies pile up by the thousands” rather than there being a third lockdown. A Labor spokesman said at the time: “If this report is true then these are truly shocking and heartbreaking comments.” “It’s hard to imagine how families who have lost loved ones to Covid will feel. Boris Johnson must make a public statement as soon as possible in response to this report.”
2. Business managers lectured about Peppa Pig theme park
The Prime Minister was left reeling when he lost his seat at a high-profile speech to business leaders – and resorted to talking about the Peppa Pig World theme park. Mr Johnson was speechless for 20 seconds as he searched through his text, muttering “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. Addressing the CBI’s annual conference, he compared himself to Moses, made ‘vroom, vroom’ noises, cracked jokes, stumbled over his words, fell silent for nearly half a minute after losing his seat and asked the cadres to stand up their hands if they had visited Peppa Pig World. In Peppa Pig World with her wife Carrie (via REUTERS)
3. Sleep at the climate summit
Political opponents and climate campaigners were outraged when Johnson was photographed with his eyes closed at the opening ceremony of the Cop26 climate talks. He was sitting between UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Sir David Attenborough. A No 10 source said it was “absolute nonsense” to suggest Johnson was sleeping.
4. “Slip of the tongue” about detention in Iran
During a select committee hearing in 2017 the then Foreign Secretary wrongly said Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in the region. Following Mr Johnson’s comments, the 38-year-old Briton was brought before an Iranian court and told her sentence could be doubled. He later faced calls to resign and apologized 12 days after his comments. She was eventually released and allowed to return to her long-suffering family earlier this year. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, pictured at RAF Brize Norton after her release from Iran, was taken to court following Mr Johnson’s comment. (PA Wire)
5. “Occasional” violation of the rules in finance
Mr Johnson broke Commons rules by failing to declare a financial interest in a property by the deadline. The Commons Standards Committee accused him in April 2019 of displaying “an overly casual attitude towards obeying the rules of the House”. The ruling came just four months after the Ruislip MP was asked to apologize for breaking the rules by failing to declare more than £52,000 of outside remuneration.
6. He hides in the refrigerator to avoid the TV reporter
Boris Johnson hid in a fridge while being chased by a TV reporter trying to interview him on the eve of the 201 general election. The Prime Minister was taking part in an early morning round of milk in Leeds when he was confronted by Good Morning Britain’s Jonathan Swain over his “promise to speak to Piers [Morgan] and Susanna [Reid]”. “I’ll be with you in a second,” Mr. Johnson replied, before escaping into a large cooler. In a video of the incident, one of the prime minister’s aides can be seen saying “oh for ***’s sake” after seeing Swain approach the group. Boris Johnson’s bodyguard swears at journalist live on TV as PM’s team carries him into giant fridge
7. Insulting niqab wearers as “letters”
Theresa May publicly reprimanded Johnson in August 2019 after he compared women wearing burqas and niqabs to letterboxes. In a column for the Daily Telegraph – a weekly undertaking which earned him £275,000 a year – Johnson described the clothes as oppressive, adding that it was “absolutely ridiculous” that people “choose to walk around like letterboxes”. He said some restrictions on their use were “sensible” but that he opposed a complete ban in public places like Denmark and claimed: “One day, I’m sure, they will go.” He wrote: “If a constituent came into my MP’s surgery with her face black, I should feel entitled… to ask her to remove it so I can speak to her properly. “If a female student shows up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber, then so be it: those in charge should be able to talk openly with those they are asked to mentor,” he wrote.
8. “Cleaning up corpses” in Libya to make it a resort
At the Conservative Party conference in October 2017, Mr Johnson was widely condemned after he claimed the Libyan city of Sirte would have a bright future as a luxury resort once investors “cleaned up the bodies”. Asked about a recent visit to Libya, where fighting still rages eight years after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, he praised the “incredible country” with its “white sand”. He added: “There is a group of UK businessmen, some great guys who want to invest in Sirte on the coast, near where Gaddafi was captured and executed. They have a brilliant vision to turn Sirte into the next Dubai. The only thing they have to do is remove the corpses.” Mr Johnson’s comments on Islamic dress attracted criticism before he became prime minister
9. Describing Africa as “this country”
Reflecting on his first three months in the job at the 2016 Tory conference, Johnson referred to Africa as “this country” while painting the world a “less safe, more dangerous and more worrying” place than it had been in a decade before. Mr Johnson appeared to suggest the continent could benefit from adopting more British values, warning that some leaders were instead becoming more authoritarian. And then he said: “Life expectancy in Africa has increased dramatically as this country has entered the global economic system.”
10. Losing the no-deal Brexit argument
A second view for Mr Johnson’s Telegraph column. In April 2019, the Independent Press Standards Organization said the former foreign secretary had broken accuracy rules by claiming polls showed a no-deal Brexit was more popular “by some margin” than Theresa May’s deal or remaining in the EU . The paper argued it was “clearly comically polemical and could not reasonably be read as a serious, empirical, in-depth analysis of hard factual issues”, but the Guardian rejected it. Boris Johnson is from Hanover and is therefore distantly related to the Queen, David Cameron (via William IV) and Danny Dyer (via Edward III), among others. Boris’s paternal grandmother, Yvonne Eileen Williams, known in the family as “Grandma Butter” and whose family name was de Pfeffel, was a descendant of Prince Paul Von Wurttemberg. The German prince was, in turn, a direct descendant of George II. Discovered by other genealogists on the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are, Johnson commented, in 2008: “I felt I was a product of newcomers to Britain, so it’s completely strange, surreal actually, to be told that actually my Great x 8 O grandfather is George II. But don’t overlook the fact that he shares this distinction with 1,023 others – there must be many thousands of other people out there in the same position.” National Portrait Gallery Last year, scientists in the Swiss city of Basel solved a decades-old mystery about the identity of a mummified woman. DNA extracted from the mummy’s toe shows that the female is Boris Johnson’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. The body was discovered in 1975 while renovations were being made at Basel’s Barfüsser church and she was buried in the altar, wearing fine clothes, suggesting she was at least well-to-do, if not noble. High levels of mercury in her remains suggest she had been treated for syphilis (the metal also helped preserve her). Basel National Gallery (Pictured with his wife Winifred Brune) For a man who made so much capital in the 2016 referendum on the prospect of Turkey joining the EU and its 80 million citizens enjoying free movement in the UK, Boris Johnson sometimes he makes a surprisingly large gesture Turkish Muslim great-grandfather on his father’s side, who claims to have been an asylum seeker. Ali Kemal, according to his famous descendant, came to Britain because he was a “beacon of generosity and openness”. I may be exaggerating, but he lived in exile in England for a time. Unknown Sir George, as it happens, is Boris Johnson’s great (x4) grandfather, and was one of the founders of the Young Men’s Christian Association, or YMCA, in 1841. An evangelical apostle of “muscular Christianity”, George took it upon himself to organize some fellows and make a safe place for the young men where they could be protected from the fornication and temptations of the flesh and the grape. No couch would have red wine stains in the guest house. It has since gone global, today helping 58…
