Boris Johnson slammed single mothers and ‘feckless’ working-class men in 1995 article

As December 12 election nears, the quotes were splashed across the front page of Daily Mirror tabloid, under the tagline ‘What he really thinks’

Johnson dismissed the criticism, insisting the ‘words are lifted out of context’ and were an ‘absolute distortion’ of what he believes

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Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Photo: AP

Published: 7:47pm, 29 Nov 2019Updated: 7:57pm, 29 Nov 2019

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday dismissed criticism of an old article he wrote condemning single mothers and “feckless” working-class men, saying the quotes were taken out of context.

In a newly unearthed article from 1995, when he was a journalist, Johnson described working-class men as “likely to be drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless”.

The quotes were splashed across the front page of the left-wing Daily Mirror tabloid, under the tagline “What he really thinks”, putting them centre stage of the campaign for the December 12 election.

The newspaper also noted that in the article for the Spectator magazine, the Conservative leader had described children of single mothers as “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate”.

“These are 25-year-old quotations culled from articles written I think before I was even in politics,” Johnson told LBC radio on Friday.

He said the “words are lifted out of context” and were an “absolute distortion” of what he believes. He accused the opposition Labour Party, which said the remarks were “outrageous”, of digging up old quotes to shift attention away from its policy on Brexit.

The quotes were splashed across the front page of the left-wing Daily Mirror tabloid. Photo: Twitter

“They’re just trying to distract from the reality that they have no plan to get out us out of the European Union,” Johnson said.