13
Sep
VERBATIM
Below is a list of quotes from Boris Johnson that are in an illustration I have made called ‘VERBATIM’.
I made this artwork to highlight what a dangerous person Boris Johnson is. Homophobic, racist, islamophobic, sexist, inflammatory rhetoric is causing hate crimes to rise.
This drawing is part of my Illustrated Prosody series of political drawings. The full list of quotes below includes dates of when the words were said or printed, and links to the sources where the quotes were found.
Since making this drawing, as I find more quotes, I am adding them to this list.
2019 [6th September]
“They just passed a law that would force me to beg Brussels for an extension to the Brexit deadline. This is something I will never do.” ~ Boris Johnson. BBC News / Telegraph
2019 [6th September]
“I’ll go to Brussels, I’ll get a deal and we’ll make sure we come out on October 31st.” ~ Boris Johnson. BBC
2019 [5th September]
“I’d rather be dead in a ditch [than ask for another delay to Brexit].” ~ Boris Johnson. BBC Politics on Twitter / Metro / New Statesman
2019 [5th September]
“Corbyn and his friends in Parliament don’t trust you to make this decision – but I do.” ~ Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson on Twitter
2019 [4th September]
“Call an election, you great big girl’s blouse.” ~ Boris Johnson. BBC Politics / Independent
2019 [4th September]
“In my view, and in the view of this government, there must now be an election on Tuesday 15 October.” ~ Boris Johnson. Politics Home
2019 [2nd September]
“We will of course uphold the constitution and obey the law.” ~ Boris Johnson. BBC Politics
2019 [2nd September]
“We are leaving on 31 October – no ifs or buts.” ~ Boris Johnson. Sky News / BBC News
2019 [2nd September]
“I don’t want an election, you don’t want an election.” ~ Boris Johnson. Sky News / BBC News
2019 [28th August]
“This morning I spoke to Her Majesty The Queen to request an end to the current parliamentary session in the second sitting week in September, before commencing the second session of this parliament with a Queen’s speech on Monday, 14 October.” ~ Boris Johnson. BBC News / Independent
2019 [28th August]
“Whilst there was a good chance that a deal could be secured, there was also a high chance that it could not.” ~ Boris Johnson. BBC News [Cabinet meeting minutes]
2019 [28th August]
“[There are] no plans for a general election … This would not be right for the British people.” ~ Boris Johnson. Politics Home / Times / Scotsman
2019 [25th August]
“The claim that the government is considering proroguing parliament in September in order to stop MPs debating Brexit is entirely false.”~ No. 10 Spokesperson. Independent
2019 [25th August]
“I think it’s going to be touch and go but the important thing is to get ready to come out without a deal.” ~ Boris Johnson. Metro / BBC News
2019 [16th August]
“The whole September session is a rigmarole introduced by girly swot Cameron to show the public that MPs were earning their crust. So I don’t see anything especially shocking about this prorogation.” ~ Boris Johnson. Guardian / Sam Coates [Sky News] on Twitter / Sky News politics / Independent / BBC News
2019 [15th August]
“[Are you content for your PPS to approach the Palace with a request for prorogation to begin within the period Monday 9th September to Thursday 12th September, and for a Queen’s speech on Monday 14th October.] YES.” ~ Boris Johnson. BBC News
2019 [10th July]
“I would also like to make absolutely clear that I am not attracted to arcane procedures such as the prorogation of parliament.” ~ Boris Johnson. Independent / One Nation Conservatives on Twitter
2019 [26th June]
“[The chances of a no-deal Brexit are] a million-to-one against.” ~ Boris Johnson. Guardian / Bloomberg
2018 [5th August]
“…it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.” ~ Boris Johnson. Telegraph / Joe
2018 [8th May]
“[A trade deal with America could not be achieved if the UK remained] locked in the lunar pull of Brussels, the tractor beam of Brussels.” ~ Boris Johnson. Guardian / Daily Mail
2017 [3rd October]
“I look at Libya, it’s an incredible country… The only thing they have got to do is clear the dead bodies away.” ~ Boris Johnson. BBC News / Independent
2017 [17th September]
“You [Sir David Norgrove] say that I claim that there would be £350 million that ‘might be available for extra public spending’ when we leave the EU. This is a complete misrepresentation of what I said … a wilful distortion.”~ Boris Johnson. Worcester News
2017 [15th September]
“…once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control of roughly £350 million per week. It would be a fine thing … if a lot of that money went on the NHS.” ~ Boris Johnson. Telegraph
2016 [19 July]
“We can all spend an awfully long time going over lots of stuff that I’ve written over the last 30 years … I’m afraid that there is such a rich thesaurus now of things that I have said that have been … somehow misconstrued that it would take me too long to engage in a full global itinerary of apology to all concerned.” ~ Boris Johnson. BBC Politics / Independent
2016 [24th June]
“We cannot turn our backs on Europe. We are part of Europe.” ~ Boris Johnson. Telegraph
2016 [10th June]
“Take back control of huge sums of money, 350 million pounds a week, and spend it on our priorities such as the NHS.” ~ Boris Johnson. ITV referendum debate
2016 [8th March]
“What’s the point of being a Conservative if you can’t turn the clock back to 1904.” ~ Boris Johnson. Guardian
2016 [21st February]
“I will be advocating vote leave.” ~ Boris Johnson. Evening Standard
2016 [19th February]
“Britain is a great nation … It is surely a boon for the world and for Europe that she should be intimately engaged in the EU. This is a market on our doorstep, ready for further exploitation by British firms: the membership fee seems rather small for all that access …There are some big questions that the “out” side need to answer. Almost everyone expects there to be some sort of economic shock as a result of a Brexit. How big would it be? … There is the worry about Scotland, and the possibility that an English-only “leave” vote could lead to the break-up of the union … There is the Putin factor: we don’t want to do anything to encourage more shirtless swaggering from the Russian leader, not in the Middle East, not anywhere.” ~ Boris Johnson. Evening Standard / Guardian / Sky News
2013 [August]
“We don’t do things that way, that’s a very left-wing thing … only a socialist could regard familial ties as being so trivial as to shaft his own brother.” ~ Boris Johnson. Independent / Telegraph
2012 [30th July]
“As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball … They are glistening like wet otters.” ~ Boris Johnson. Telegraph
2012 [March]
“It is easy to make promises. It is hard work to keep them.” ~ Boris Johnson. Guardian
2007
“She’s [Hilary Clinton] got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital.” ~ Boris Johnson. Telegraph / Guardian
2007
“The awful truth is that people do take me seriously … you must consider the possibility that underneath it all there really may lurk a genuine buffoon.” ~ Boris Johnson. Guardian / ‘Misadventures of a Big Mouth Brit’ – Piers Morgan’s book
2007
“…in families on lower incomes the women have absolutely no choice but to work, often with adverse consequences for family life and society as a whole — in that unloved and undisciplined children are more likely to become hoodies, NEETS, and mug you on the street corner.” ~ Boris Johnson. Spectator
2006
“Not only did I want Bush to win, but we threw the entire weight of The Spectator behind him.” ~ Boris Johnson. Wikiquotes [‘Have I got views for you’ – Boris Johnson’s book]
2006
“For 10 years, we in the Tory party have become used to Papua New Guineastyle orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing.” ~ Boris Johnson. Telegraph / Telegraph / gal-dem
2005
“Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3” ~ Boris Johnson. Independent
2005
“It’s an attested fact that under Conservative governments the quality of living of the British people has immeasurably improved … leading inexorably to superior mammary glands.” ~ Boris Johnson. Guardian
2005 [17th December]
“Just pat her on the bottom and send her on her way.” ~ Boris Johnson. Spectator
2005 [5th October]
“I’m backing David Cameron’s campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest.” ~ Boris Johnson. Telegraph / Independent
2005 [16th July]
“We — non-Muslims — cannot solve the problem; we cannot brainwash them out of their fundamentalist beliefs … That means disposing of the first taboo, and accepting that the problem is Islam. Islam is the problem. To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia — fear of Islam — seems a natural reaction … What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s medieval ass?” ~ Boris Johnson. Spectator
2005 [11th April]
“I’m having Sunday lunch with my family. I’m vigorously campaigning, inculcating my children in the benefits of a Tory government.” ~ Boris Johnson. Guardian
2004
“I can hardly condemn UKIP as a bunch of boss-eyed, foam-flecked Euro hysterics, when I have been sometimes not far short of boss-eyed, foam-flecked hysteria myself.” ~ Boris Johnson. Independent / Guardian / Telegraph
2002 [2nd February]
“YOU would need a heart of stone not to have been moved by the little Aids-ridden choristers …The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more. Consider Uganda, pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. Are we guilty of slavery? Pshaw … The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.” ~ Boris Johnson. Spectator
2002 [10th January]
“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 … the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles.” ~ Boris Johnson. Telegraph
2001
“If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog.” ~ Boris Johnson. Discrier [Book ‘Friends, Voters, Countrymen’]
2000 [August 3rd]
“It is more sensitive to spare parents’ anxieties, than to allow Left-wing local authorities to waste taxpayers’ money on idiotic and irrelevant homosexual instruction.” ~ Boris Johnson. Telegraph
2000 [16th July]
“[I am] a wise guy playing the fool to win.” ~ Boris Johnson. Wikiquotes / Prospect [Sunday Times, July 2000, p17]
2000 [6th July]
“Stand up and fight like a man, you euro pansy!”~ Boris Johnson. Telegraph
2000 [15th April]
“…Labour’s appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it.” ~ Boris Johnson. Spectator
1998
“WEEP, O ye shirt-makers of Jermyn Street … In the Ministry of Sound the tank-topped bumboys blub into their Pilis. In the soft-lit Soho drinking clubs frequented by Mandy [Peter Mandelson] and his pals, his deed will be likened to Captain Oates…” ~ Boris Johnson. Telegraph [via Business Insider] / Huffpost
1997
“We live in an age where feminism is a fact, where giving vent to emotion in public wins votes.” ~ Boris Johnson. PS News / Business Insider
1995
“[The offspring of single mothers are] ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate children.” ~ Boris Johnson. Independent
