WATCH: Boris Johnson criticised after he denies pushing Turkish immigration claims in EU referendum campaign
3 min read
Boris Johnson has been condemned after he denied stoking up fears about Turkish immigration during the EU referendum.
The former Foreign Secretary claimed that he "didn’t say a thing about Turkey" in the run-up to the 2016 vote, despite warnings about the country joining the EU forming a key plank of the Vote Leave campaign.
Mr Johnson was challenged following a speech on Brexit seen as a thinly-veiled bid for the Tory leadership.
But it quickly emerged that in April 2016, the former London Mayor, whose grandfather was Turkish, said: “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 really mad – that won’t work.”
Two months later, Mr Johnson and fellow Leave campaigner Michael Gove penned a letter to then-Prime Minister David Cameron claiming that the only way to halt mass immigration from Turkey was for the UK to vote to leave the EU.
They wrote: “Despite the rapidly accelerating pace of accession negotiations, ‘In’ campaigners maintain that Turkey ‘is not an issue in this referendum and it shouldn’t be’.
“Others assert that the UK has ‘a veto’ on Turkish accession. This claim is obviously artificial given the government’s commitment to Turkish accession at the earliest opportunity.
"If the Government cannot give this guarantee, the public will draw the reasonable conclusion that the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote Leave and take back control on 23 June."
Both Mr Johnson and Mr Gove were leading figures in the Vote Leave campaign, which used social media advertising to raise fears about Turkish immigration to the UK should they be allowed to join the EU.
Labour MP Virendra Sharma, speaking on behalf of the pro-Remain Best for Britain campaign, said: “Boris puts the moron in oxymoron. He’s now trying to act the great liberal by championing migration, after shamelessly pushing anti-Turkish messages as a leader of the Vote Leave campaign.
"But the government must love it when he gets up and gives these speeches. He’s a helpful clown, distracting from the Government’s failures by pushing a no deal that Parliament won’t let happen.
"It’s time to stop giving his ill-thought through ideas oxygen, and hand the Brexit decision back to the public through a people’s vote.”
Liberal Democract MP Tom Brake added: "No one will take lessons from Boris Johnson on eroding trust in our democracy. The fact he is still peddling mistruths about money from Brexit going to our NHS is shameful. Brexit will make us poorer."
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