Boris Johnson Defends Previous Homophobic Comments: They Were “Wholly Satirical”

Current frontrunner for Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has taken to Sky News to defend previous homophobic and racist comments he made.

“I think if you look at each of every one of those articles… the quotations have been wrenched out of context in some cases to mean the opposite of what I intended,” Johnson claimed.

In a 2002 column for The Telegraph he wrote that: “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.”

And that African people had “watermelon smiles.”

In 1998, he wrote that the resignation of openly gay Labour Business Secretary Peter Mandelson would lead to the blubbing of “tank-topped bumboys” in “the Ministry of Sound” and “the soft-lit Soho drinking clubs frequented by Mandy and his pals.”

Sky News’ Sophie Ridge pointed out that Johnson’s defensiveness sounded “a little bit like someone who just won’t take responsibility…

You won’t take responsibility for what you write in your columns, it was just ‘wrenched out of context’. I mean is that a quality we would want in a Prime Minister?”

“On the contrary, I take full responsibility for everything I’ve said,” Johnson replied.

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