Boris Johnson’s shock appointment as Britain’s foreign secretary has given European counterparts an immediate diplomatic headache – over whether to have dinner with him on Sunday in Brussels.
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Johnson is likely to have a limited role in European Union negotiations, as Prime Minister May has created a new government department tasked with handling Brexit’, headed by long-time Eurosceptic lawmaker David Davis.
May, finalizing her Cabinet lineup on Thursday, expanded the number of women in leadership posts, including the appointments of Amber Rudd to May’s former position as home secretary and Liz Truss as justice minister, replacing Michael Gove, the onetime Johnson ally who had knocked Johnson out of the race for leadership of the governing Conservative party.
“Everyone in the European Parliament thinks it’s a bad joke and that the Brits have lost it”. Numerous reports from the event suggested Mr Johnson got both applause and jeers after the speech.
“His negative comments on Erdogan and Turkey are unacceptable”, a senior Turkish official said. “We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives”, she said.
A common jibe at Mr Johnson is that he rather grandly, and with scant justification, sees himself in the mould of Winston Churchill, a notion fuelled by his admiring – and well-received – biography of the late British statesman.
European Union diplomats said ministers had planned a quiet chat on post-Brexit relations with Johnson’s predecessor, expecting Philip Hammond, who campaigned to stay in the European Union in last month’s referendum, to reassure them on continued cooperation in crises such as Libya.
“On all the phone calls, the prime minister emphasized her commitment to delivering the will of the British people to leave the European Union”, a spokeswoman for May said.
Mr Johnson is a former journalist who became MP for Henley in 2001 who was mayor of London for eight years. He lied a lot to the British. “[He has] his back against the wall to defend his country but also with his back against the wall the relationship with Europe should be clear”.
“I need a partner with whom I can negotiate and who is clear, credible and reliable”, he added.
“We can not let this ambiguous, blurred situation drag on…in the interests of the British themselves”.
Speaking to BBC news after his appointment on Wednesday, Mr Johnson said he was “obviously very, very humbled, very, very proud to be offered this chance”.
The man at the centre of the storm said on Thursday that given the referendum result, it was inevitable that there would be “plaster coming off the ceiling in the chancelleries of Europe”. “Clearly they are making their views known in a frank and free way”.
He’s called foreigners “piccaninnies” and “cannibals”, and once referred to Hillary Clinton as a “sadistic nurse in a mental hospital”.
Under the headline “Bravo for Assad – he is a vile tyrant but he has saved Palmyra from ISIL [DAESH]”, Johnson wrote in his weekly column for the Telegraph newspaper, “I can not hide my elation as the news comes in from Palmyra and it is reported that the Syrian army is genuinely back in control of the entire Unesco site”. “I was in NY and some photographers were trying to take a picture of me and a girl walked down the pavement towards me and she stopped and she said, ‘Gee, is that Trump?'” Johnson described the city of Portsmouth as “one of the most depressed downs in southern England, a place that is arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs”. So he really has a great deal of foreign experience.
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Mr Kerry’s spokesman said he had “stressed United States support for a sensible and measured approach” to Brexit.
