May is weak and Boris has hair like Trump says German Eurocrat

A SENIOR Eurocrat ridiculed Theresa May as ‘weak’ while mocking Boris Johnson for having the same haircut as Donald Trump.

The outburst by German EU commissioner Gunther Oettinger risks inflaming tensions between Brussels and the UK.

‘Madame May is weak and Boris Johnson has the same hairdo as Trump. That says everything,’ he said. ‘We can only hope sensible citizens will put Madame May on the path to a clever Brexit.’

Gaffe-prone Mr Oettinger, 64, made the comments while talking about Brexit to pupils at an EU-funded school in the German city of Karlsruhe.

The discussion is understood to have centred on clashes between the Prime Minister and Mr Johnson after he described proposals for a ‘customs partnership’ with the EU as ‘crazy’. Mr Oettinger, who is in charge of the EU’s budget and workforce has previously criticised Mrs May’s approach to Brexit talks.

He said she was a ‘weak negotiating partner’ who would lead to a bad result ‘for both sides’.

Mr Oettinger’s career has been plagued by his controversial remarks.

In 2016 he was recorded calling a group of Chinese ministers ‘slitty-eyed’ during a secretly recorded after-dinner speech in Hamburg. He said that the group looked like they had ‘black shoe polish on their hair’, and referred to them as ‘chisellers’, or thieves. During the same speech, made while serving as digital commissioner, he was also accused of insulting women and gay people after joking about the introduction of ‘compulsory gay marriage’.

Mr Oettinger, a senior member of German chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, was pushed into making an apology by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.

Weeks later he faced criticism when it was revealed that he had used a Kremlin lobbyist’s private jet for a meeting with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban.

Mrs May’s spokesman said the Prime Minister enjoys a close relationship with Germany, but refused to comment on the similarity between Mr Trump and Mr Johnson’s hairstyles.

He said: ‘The Prime Minister has a very strong relationship with the Chancellor in relation to Brexit and a series of other matters and looks forward to that constructive relationship continuing.’