Boris Johnson was sacked from his job at The Times newspaper over allegations he fabricated a quote from his godfather, the historian Colin Lucas, for a front-page article about the discovery of Edward II’s Rose Palace.

“The trouble was that somewhere in my copy I managed to attribute to Colin the view that Edward II and Piers Gaveston would have been cavorting together in the Rose Palace,” he claimed.

Alas, Gaveston was executed 13 years before the palace was built. “It was very nasty,” Mr Johnson added, before attempting to downplay it as nothing more than a schoolboy blunder.

After leaving the Times, Mr Johnson moved to The Daily Telegraph, working as the publication's Brussels correspondent between 1989 and 1994.

His articles, like those in several other Eurosceptic newspapers, contained many of the claims widely described as “Euromyths”, including plans to introduce same-size “eurocoffins”, establish a “banana police force” to regulate the shape of the curved yellow fruit, and ban prawn cocktail crisps.

When questioned about them in parliament, he denied suggestions they were a figment of his imagination.

Mr Johnson became editor of the Spectator in 1999 after telling owner Conrad Black, who was later convicted of fraud, that he would not pursue a political career. This promise was broken in 2001 when he won election as Conservative MP for Henley in Oxfordshire.

Three years later he was forced to apologise for an article in the magazine which blamed drunken Liverpool fans for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and suggested that the people of the city were wallowing in their victim status.

Michael Howard gave Boris Johnson two new jobs after becoming leader of the Conservatives in 2003 – party vice-chairman and shadow arts minister.

He was sacked from both positions in November 2004 after assuring Mr Howard that tabloid reports of his affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt were false and an “inverted pyramid of piffle”. When the story was found to be true, he refused to resign.

Mr Johnson's fondness for fallacy continued as London Mayor. Having promised in his 2008 manifesto to ensure there would be manned ticket offices at every train station, he agreed to widespread closures to pay for a 24-hour tube.

He promised to eradicate rough sleeping by 2012, only for it to double during his leadership. He was also accused of telling “barefaced lies” after he stated that police numbers would increase in London despite government cuts.

Launching the Vote Leave bus tour, Mr Johnson returned to the scene of his earlier falsehoods by repeating his old allegations that the EU was setting rules on the shape of bananas.

He also backed the infamous claim on the side of the bus that the UK was sending £350m a week to the EU, followed by “let’s fund our NHS instead”.

The UK Statistics Authority issued an official statement in May 2016 describing the claim as “misleading”, but Mr Johnson repeated it in an article in the Telegraph in September 2017.


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The UK Statistics Authority criticised the use of the £350m figure by Leave campaigners during the referendum campaign in 2016, saying the figure did not take into account the UK’s rebate or the money that comes back via farming subsidies, regional development funds or grants to the private sector.

In January Boris Johnson claimed he did not mention Turkey during the referendum after it was suggested he falsely claimed 80 million Turks would come to Britain unless the UK left the EU.

In fact, he co-signed a letter stating that “the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote Leave and take back control”.

Mr Johnson, whose great-grandfather was the Ottoman politican Ali Kemal, was also quoted as saying “I am very pro-Turkish but what I certainly can’t imagine is a situation in which 77 million of my fellow Turks and those of Turkish origin can come here without any checks at all. That is mad – that won’t work.”

Well, he is not as bad as trump, but he is working on it.
And like trump his followers will deny every lie Al-Bo tells...

Well, he is not as bad as trump, but he is working on it.
And like trump his followers will deny every lie Al-Bo tells...