Boris returns fire with new jibe at President
BORIS Johnson last night continued to stoke his row with Barack Obama despite a warning that his behaviour was harming the Out campaign.
Ukip leader Nigel Farage criticised the London Mayor for playing ‘the man not the ball’ when he claimed the US president’s ‘part-Kenyan ancestry’ might make him anti-British.
Mr Obama delivered a pointed slap-down in response to Mr Johnson at a Press conference on Friday, during which he said the UK would be at the ‘back of the queue’ for a trade deal if it voted to leave the EU.
Far from backing down, Mr Johnson said the British public would not be cowed by Mr Obama or ‘fat cats’. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said: ‘So I gather they think it’s game over. The Bremainers think they have bombed us into submission. They think we have just seen the turning point in the referendum campaign, and that the British people are so intimidated by these testimonials – American presidents, business leaders, fat cats of every description – that they now believe the British people will file meekly to the polls in two months time and consent to stay in the EU; and thereby to the slow and insidious erosion of democracy.’
Mr Johnson’s attack on Mr Obama has been seized on with glee by the In camp. The row exploded on Friday when Mr Johnson said the president had removed a Winston Churchill bust from the Oval Office because of ‘ancestral dislike of the British Empire’.
Mr Obama responded by saying he loved Churchill and still saw his bust every day in the White House. He pointed out that he had made the change to make way for one of Martin Luther King.
Yesterday Mr Farage said of the mayor’s remarks: ‘If you are seen to be attacking the man and not the ball that is not where we need to be.’ Figures inside the Leave camp are also said to have been unhappy with the row. One remarked: ‘It was a misjudgement. He must stop going off piste.’
Another reportedly said: ‘Obama coming here and telling us what to think is insulting but Boris issues a borderline racist insult and it all rebounds on us.’
Philip Hammond, whose Foreign Secretary job Mr Johnson has been linked with in a future reshuffle, said: ‘People who aspire to hold offices of great responsibility do have to show that even under pressure they retain their cool and they don’t step over any red lines. The argument has got very heated and I would say that the most heat has been generated by the Brexiteers.’
But Armed Forces minister Penny Mordaunt, a Leave campaigner, said: ‘Any accusation that Boris Johnson is somehow being unpleasant, racist or any of that is quite frankly incredibly insulting.’
Miss Mordaunt told ITV News: ‘Vote Leave is gathering momentum, in part because people believe in what this country can achieve with more freedom and control.
‘What the public want is facts and the arguments – that’s what they’ll get from Vote leave, not the Westminster gossip that others and Remain are focused on.’
Labour’s Chuka Umunna, a leading Remain campaigner, said the mayor’s comments about Mr Obama were ‘disgraceful and embarrassing’.