Tory Muslim leader compares Boris Johnson to Hitler and vows to quit party if he becomes PM
3 min read
A leading Muslim Tory activist has compared Boris Johnson to Adolf Hitler and vowed to quit the party if he becomes leader.
Mohammed Amin, chair of the Conservative Muslim Forum, said the former Foreign Secretary was unfit to be Prime Minister over his comments comparing women wearing the burka to letter boxes and bank robbers.
Mr Johnson, the clear frontrunner in the race to succeed Theresa May, has insisted he will continue to speak his mind if he makes it to Downing Street.
But Mr Amin said the MP for Uxbridge was a "buffoon" whose popularity with Tory members did not mean he was qualified to be PM.
Speaking on Radio Four's Today programme, he said: "I have been a Conservative party member for over 36 years, and we don’t expect our politicians, our Prime Minister, to be saints, but we do require a basic level of morality and integrity and of all the candidates in the Conservative party leadership election, Boris Johnson is the only one that I believe fails that test and I’m not prepared to be a member of a party that chooses him as its leader.
"I would resign after 36 years."
He added: "There are many horrible people who have been popular, popularity is not the test. The test is: ‘Is this person sufficiently moral to be Prime Minister?,’ and I believe he fails that test."
When it was pointed out that many Tory MPs believe Mr Johnson is "the right man" to be leader, Mr Amin said: "A lot of Germans thought that Hitler was the right man for them.
"I’m not saying that Boris Johnson wants to send people to the gas chambers, clearly he doesn’t, he’s a buffoon. But he as far as I’m concerned has insufficient concern about the nature of truth for me to ever be a member of a party that he leads."
A Conservative Party probe cleared Mr Johnson over his burka comments, which he made in his Daily Telegraph column last year.
Speakign at his leadership launch, he said: "Of course occasionally some plaster comes off the ceiling as a result of a phrase I may have used or indeed as a result of the way that phrase has been taken out of context and interpreted by those who wish for reasons of their own to caraciture my views," he said.
"But I think it is vital that we as politicians remember that one of the reasons why the public feels alienated now from us all as a breed is because we are muffling and veiling our language. We don't speak as we find and cover it up in bureaucratic language when what they want to hear is what we really think.
"And if sometimes in the course of trying to get across what I genuinely think I use phrases and language that have caused offence then of course I'm sorry for the offence I've caused but I will continue to speak as directly as I can."
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