Boris Johnson is not the Class Clown; He’s a Hateful Bigot
By: Livi Vosper
Tags: Islamophobia, Bigotry, Government, Boris Johnson, UK Politics

Boris Johnson is not a harmless buffoon to laugh along with, he’s a racist charlatan who represents the worst of our country. His Etonian posh-boy accent makes him palatable, and creates a false sense of intelligence. Let’s get the facts straight about our new Prime Minister.

Boris Johnson is a racist and an Islamophobe.”Flag-waving picanninies” with “watermelon smiles” is a description of black people that sounds like something out of a history book. Whilst it may seem like a phrase plucked from the era of the slave trade, it is in fact from 2002, when Johnson wrote in The Telegraph about a visit to Africa by Tony Blair. The vile way in which Johnson casually derides people of colour makes me feel sick to my stomach. If you made a comment even half as inappropriate in any office in this country, you would risk losing your job, and yet somehow this man has worked his way up to being Prime Minister. Johnson has never apologised for this comment, instead claiming that it was ‘taken out of context’. There is no ‘context’ that justifies outright racism. On top of the racism, sexism, and homophobia, Johnson is an undeniable Islamophobe. He described Islamophobia as a “natural reaction” to the religion, as well as arguing that “Islam is the problem” in regards to terrorism. Rather than examine the complex ways that terrorist organisation manipulate and radicalise, Johnson commented:

“What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s medieval ass?”.

Despite agreeing to “an external investigation in the Conservative Party into Islamophobia” as put forward by Sajid Javid at the BBC Leadership Debate, he made a U-turn two weeks later saying that he would not pursue a specific investigation into Islamophobia, but rather a general investigation of prejudice.

Boris Johnson has been repeatedly fired for incompetence and dishonesty.

Johnson has been fired from The Times for lying after he fabricated quotes in one of his articles. It’s not the only job he’s lost due to lying, he was fired as Shadow Arts Minister and Conservative Vice Chair after lying about his affair with journalist Petronella Wyatt. His former colleagues, including Norman Baker, have called him “lazy and petulant” saying that “what worked did so in spite of Boris, not because of him.”. Johnson has got by on nothing but his ‘charm’, schmoozing his way up the ladder without any apparent skill or hard work. His incompetence has led Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband to hold him responsible for his wife’s incarceration in Iran. Johnson made comments that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been “teaching journalism” in Iran, undermining her statement that she was there on holiday. His comment was later cited as proof that she had engaged in “propaganda against the regime”. Johnson’s ‘£350 million’ promise, emblazoned on the side of a bus for all to see was revealed to be completely fabricated, and his speeches on ‘ridiculous’ EU health and safety policies were actually UK policies, not European ones. He shambles together a string of nonsense words, throwing in enough private school vocabulary to make it seem like you’re too uneducated to understand him when in actuality he’s too unintelligent to make any sense.

Despite claiming to be a feminist, Boris Johnson has repeatedly and openly demeaned women.

Johnson described Muslim women who choose to wear a burka (as an aside, he was actually talking about the niqab, not the burka) as looking like “bank robbers” and “letterboxes”. In 2013, he stated that the only reason Malaysian women go to university is to find a husband. His reporting of the 1996 Labour Conference included the phrase: Time and again the ‘Tottymeter’ has gone off as a young woman delegate mounts the rostrum.” as well as attributing women’s voting habits to “the fickleness of their sex. His time working in journalism also included sexist actions, not just words. Johnson has openly admitted to having a calendar on his desk that featured female nudity, despite complaints from his colleagues. In 2012, whilst hosting the Olympics as the Mayor of London, Johnson talked of the “magnificent” time he’d spent watching “semi-naked women playing beach volleyball… glistening like wet otters.”. It seems that no woman can escape Johnson’s ridicule, whether they are deemed to be covering up too much or too little. Female members of the London Assembly have made allegations of sexism against Mr Johnson, describing him as “disrespectful” and “patronising” to women in meetings.

Whilst women are beaten up on buses for being gay, Johnson does not shy away from homophobia.

Another bigoted comment from Johnson’s journalism days is his description of gay men as “tank-topped bumboys”. In 2000 Johnson wrote in the Spectator criticising “Labour’s appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it.” The current demonstrations outside primary schools protesting the new curriculum (which includes discussion of homosexual relationships) demonstrate that we can not take for granted that our schools teach children that it is okay to be gay, we could easily revert to the bigoted teachings of our past if we don’t take great care to protect the advances we have made. Perhaps Johnson’s most shocking comment is when he compared marriage equality to bestiality in 2001. In his own book, Johnson wrote:

“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.”. We can not simply roll our eyes and ignore comments like these.

These are not funny ‘gaffs’, they are the words of our Prime Minister, and will undoubtedly serve to embolden the homophobes of this country. LGBT+ people still face constant discrimination and harassment, and now that homophobes feel they have the backing of the most powerful man in the country, more hateful and bigoted acts are likely to occur.

Boris Johnson is not a democratically elected leader; he has been chosen by fewer than 100,000 people on promises of tax cuts and Brexit. An image of him as a harmless class clown caricature has been cultivated by the media for years and made him palatable enough to remain in politics. We mustn’t forget that bigotry like this is not “just politics”, it emboldens those who previously hid their views and encourages them to act on their hatred. We have to keep fighting before we end up watching our country spiral into a steady decline under Donald 2.0.