Boris accuses SNP of stirring ‘Londonophobia’

Boris Johnson has accused the SNP of stirring up “Londonophobia” during the independence campaign.

The London mayor attacked what he claimed was Anglophobic rhetoric fromNationalists who suggested the UK capital was “divorced” from the rest of the country.

In a typically joke-infused and crowd-pleasing speech to the Tory faithful in Birmingham, Mr Johnson mocked Alex Salmond, the Ukip “kippers” and the manmany hope he will one day succeed, Prime Minister David Cameron.

“That’s our new fisheries policy, folks – first chuck Salmond overboard and then eat the kippers for breakfast,” he said.

Mr Salmond had branded London a “dark star” that destabilises the country’s economy in a speech inMarch, saying an independent Scotland offered the potential to create a “northern light” alternative.

Mr Johnson attacked the claims, saying: “I noticed over the last fewweeks and months that there was a slight note not just of Anglophobia but of Londonophobia in some of the rhetoric of our friends in the Scottish Nationalist Party.

“A suggestion that Londoners were culturally, politically and economically divorced from the rest of the country.

“To listen to some of the London-bashing you might think that London was a modern Babylon with billionaires being plied with hot towels in the top-deck club class of their swanky new buses. Or guzzling pearls dissolved in vinegar while lolling back on the padded cushions of their Barclays hire bikes.”

Themayor, who is standing in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat atWestminster next year, said people were “talking through the back of their neck” if they implied London was irrelevant to the wider economy.

“Because at this conference we can say with pride that London remains not just the capital of England but thanks to the wisdom of a clear majority of Scots it is the capital of Britain and the capital of the United Kingdom and will remain so for our lifetimes,” he said.

“You have permission to purr,” Mr Johnson added.