Former aide warns Johnson’s comments could backfire

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BORIS JOHNSON could have been an “inspiring” prime minister but is “digging his own political grave” with controversies such as a jibe about suicide vests, a former key aide said yesterday.

Guto Harri, who was Mr Johnson’s communications director while he was mayor of London, said the former for- eign secretary was using his “humour, charm and intellect” in a “self-destructive way” that was “doing enormous damage to him as well as to the country”.

He also claimed Mr Johnson anticipated the country voting against Brexit and, once the Leave vote transpired, “didn’t know how to see it through”.

The intervention by Mr Harri, former BBC journalist, came after emerged that he joked in an earlier text message to Mr Johnson that if the MP refused to be interviewed by him on a television show, he might “start saying yes to the endless stream of offers I’m getting to talk about suicide vests and sexual incontinence”. Yesterday he told BBC Radio 4’s Week

“He is now dragging us into a place where we think that we can joke about suicide vests and that we can also be sexually incontinent.”

Asked if Mr Johnson had gone “too far”, following his claim Theresa May had “wrapped a suicide vest” around the British constitution with her Brexit plan, Mr Harri said: “I fear that Boris is digging. Somebody needs to take the spade out of his hand or it looks to me like he’s digging his political grave.”