Boris Johnson’s most memorable quotes during his career
File picture: Paul Ellis/PA Wire
Boris Johnson’s volatile tenure as prime minister will come to an end after months of being dogged by lockdown breach allegations and scandals over the behaviour of Conservative MPs.
During his career in both journalism and politics, he has become known for his colourful language that has often attracted criticism and caused controversy.
Here are some of his most best, worst and most notorious quotes spanning more than two decades:
– “Labour’s appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it” – .
– “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” – .
– “I don’t see why people are so snooty about Channel Five. It has some respectable documentaries about the Second World War. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap-dancing, and other related and vital subjects” – .
– “My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive” – .
– “I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn’t go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar” – .
– “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” – .
– “As I write these words, Gordon Brown is still holed up in Downing Street. He is like some illegal settler in the Sinai desert, lashing himself to the radiator, or like David Brent haunting The Office in that excruciating episode when he refuses to acknowledge that he has been sacked. Isn’t there someone — the Queen’s Private Secretary, the nice policeman on the door of No 10 – whose job it is to tell him that the game is up?” –
– “It is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes” –
– “Despite looking a bit like Dobby the House Elf, he is a ruthless and manipulative tyrant” – .
– “Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner. We looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to play wiff waff” – .
– “My speaking style was criticised by no less an authority than Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a low moment to have my rhetorical skills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg” – .
– “Are you saying they don’t have the guts to put questions to me? Great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies” – .
– “I don’t know what a pint of milk costs. So what?” – .
– “The part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender” – .
– “My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it” – .
– “The only reason I wouldn’t go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump” – .
– “I know he’s worried about free trade deals with America but there’s only one chlorinated chicken that I can see in this House and he’s on that bench” – .
– “This is going to be a fantastic year for Britain” – .
– “I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were actually a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you’ll be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands” – .
– “From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction – you must stay at home” – .
– “The Leader of the Opposition has more flip-flops than Bournemouth beach” – .
– “The one thing I object to in this whole farrago of nonsense is I love John Lewis” – .
– “I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture, and we stopped this general bout of self-recrimination and wetness” – .
– “You’ve got to know what everyone else is talking about. Otherwise, you’re going to be gossiped about and you’re going to lose out” – .
– “Peppa Pig World is very much my kind of place. It has very safe streets, discipline in schools, heavy emphasis on new mass transit systems” – .
– “Nobody told me that what we were doing was against the rules, that the event in question was something that… was not a work event, and as I said in the House of Commons when I went out into that garden I thought that I was attending a work event” – .
– “I also want to say above all that I take full responsibility for everything that took place on my watch. Sue Gray’s report has emphasised that it is up to the political leadership in Number 10 to take ultimate responsibility and, of course, I do” – .
– “I was sorry to receive your letter of resignation yesterday. I want to thank you for your service. When we spoke on Monday, you said that you were content to remain until the end of the year. So your letter came as a surprise” – .
– “I think it was a mistake and I apologise for it. In hindsight it was the wrong thing to do. I apologise to everybody who has been badly affected by it. I want to make absolutely clear that there’s no place in this Government for anybody who is predatory or who abuses their position of power” – .
– “The job of a Prime Minister in difficult circumstances when he has been handed a colossal mandate is to keep going and that’s what I’m going to do” –
