page_title: Boris Johnson
section_title: Foreign Secretary: 2016–2018
hierarchical_section_title: Boris Johnson / Return to Parliament / Foreign Secretary: 2016–2018
caption_attribution_description: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry poses with Saudi Arabia Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan on July 19, 2016, at Lancaster House in London, U.K., before a working dinner focused on Yemen. [State Department Photo/ Public Domain]
context_page_description: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British politician, author, and former journalist who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party since 2019. He was Foreign Secretary from 2016 to 2018 and Mayor of London from 2008 to 2016. Johnson was Member of Parliament for Henley from 2001 to 2008 and has been MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip since 2015. Ideologically, he identifies as a one-nation conservative.
  Johnson was educated at Eton College and studied Classics at Balliol College, Oxford. He was elected President of the Oxford Union in 1986. In 1989, he became the Brussels correspondent and later a political columnist for The Daily Telegraph, where his articles exerted a strong Eurosceptic influence on the British right. He was the editor of The Spectator magazine from 1999 to 2005. After being elected MP for Henley in 2001, Johnson served as a junior Shadow Minister under Conservative leaders Michael Howard and David Cameron. In 2008, he was elected Mayor of London and resigned from the House of Commons; he was re-elected as Mayor in 2012.
context_section_description: After Theresa May became leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister, she appointed Johnson Foreign Secretary in July 2016. Analysts saw the appointment as a tactic to weaken Johnson politically: the new positions of "Brexit Secretary" and International Trade Secretary left the Foreign Secretary as a figurehead with few powers. Johnson's appointment ensured that he would often be out of the country and unable to organise and mobilise backbenchers against her, while also forcing him to take responsibility for problems caused by withdrawing from the EU. Johnson's appointment was criticised by some journalists and foreign politicians due to his history of controversial statements about other countries. Former Prime Minister of Sweden Carl Bildt said: "I wish it was a joke". A senior official in Obama's government suggested Johnson's appointment would push the US further towards Germany at the expense of the Special Relationship with the UK.
  Johnson's visit to Turkey from 25 to 27 September 2016 was somewhat tense due to his having won Douglas Murray's poetry competition about the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, four months earlier. When questioned by a journalist whether he would apologise for the poem, Johnson dismissed the matter as "trivia". Johnson pledged to help Turkey join the EU and expressed support for Erdogan's government. Johnson supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen and refused to block UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, stating there was no clear evidence of breaches of international humanitarian law by Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen. In September 2016, human rights groups accused him of blocking the UN inquiry into Saudi war crimes in Yemen. Given the UK-Saudi alliance, in December, he attracted attention for commenting that the Saudis were akin to the Iranians in "puppeteering and playing proxy wars" throughout the Middle East. May said his comments did not represent the government's view.
  In November 2016, Johnson told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe—a British-Iranian dual citizen serving a five-year prison sentence in Iran after being arrested for training citizen journalists and bloggers in a BBC World Service Trust project—had been "simply teaching people journalism". Zaghari-Ratcliffe had said that her visit had been made simply for her daughter to meet her grandparents. Facing criticism, Johnson stated he had been misquoted and that nothing he said had justified Zaghari-Ratcliffe's sentence. In May 2018, Johnson backed the Iran nuclear deal framework despite Donald Trump's withdrawal. Johnson said that the deal brought economic benefits to the Iranian people. Johnson described the Gülen movement as a "cult" and supported Turkey's post-coup purges. He said that Turkey's coup attempt "was deeply violent, deeply anti-democratic, deeply sinister and it was totally right that it was crushed." 
  In April 2017, Johnson said that Gibraltar's sovereignty was "not going to change" after Brexit. Johnson promised while in Northern Ireland that Brexit would leave the Irish border "absolutely unchanged". In May 2017, during the 2017 United Kingdom general election, he was criticised by a woman for discussing ending tariffs on Indian whisky in a Sikh temple in Bristol (alcohol use is prohibited in Sikhism). He later expressed regret that the protestor held differing views to his on alcohol.
  Johnson visited the islands of Anguilla, and Tortola (in the British Virgin Islands) on 13 September 2017 to confirm the United Kingdom's commitment to helping restore British territories devastated by Hurricane Irma. He said he was reminded of photos of Hiroshima after it had been hit by the atom bomb.
  In September 2017, he was criticised for reciting lines from Rudyard Kipling's poem Mandalay while visiting a Myanmar temple; the British ambassador, who was with him, suggested it was "not appropriate". In October 2017, he faced criticism for stating that the Libyan city of Sirte could become an economic success like Dubai: "all they have to do is clear the dead b
caption: Foreign Ministers of the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, before a working dinner focused on Yemen, 19 July 2016
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