Boris Johnson Quotes

if we get it wrong we will be punished

[EU regulations would] cheat the electorate

[There had been a] collective failure of government, and a collapse of will by the British establishment, to deliver on the mandate of the people

[The UK should] chuck Chequers

[A Super Canada deal would involve: mutual recognition agreements covering UK and EU regulations to ensure] conformity of goods with each other's standards

[A Super Canada deal would involve] zero tariffs and zero quotas [on all imports and exports]

[The Chequers proposals represented] the intellectual error of believing we can be half-in, half-out

[There has been a] collective failure of government, and a collapse of will by the British establishment, to deliver on the mandate of the people.

Theresa May's Chequers plan for future relations with the EU would mean] abandoning our seat around the table in Brussels and continuing to accept the single market legislation

It [Theresa May's Chequers plan] is a humiliation. We look like a seven-stone weakling being comically bent out of shape by a 500lb gorilla.

I am against a total ban because it is inevitably construed – rightly or wrongly – as being intended to make some point about Islam. If you go for a total ban, you play into the hands of those who want to politicise and dramatise the so-called clash of civilisations; and you fan the flames of grievance. You risk turning people into martyrs, and you risk a general crackdown on any public symbols of religious affiliation, and you may simply make the problem worse.

If a constituent came to my MP’s surgery with her face obscured, I should feel fully entitled – like Jack Straw – to ask her to remove it so that I could talk to her properly. If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber then ditto: those in authority should be allowed to converse openly with those that they are being asked to instruct.

If you tell me that the burka is oppressive, then I am with you. If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces, then I totally agree – and I would add that I can find no scriptural authority for the practice in the Koran. I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes; and I thoroughly dislike any attempt by any – invariably male – government to encourage such demonstrations of "modesty".

[The Brexit] dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt

[A customs partnership would create] a whole new web of bureaucracy