Foreign Secretary, short for Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, is one of the four most senior positions in the United Kingdom government.
Advertisement
Celebrities, politicians and civilians were united in their reaction to Johnson’s appointment as the UK’s Foreign Secretary – by new British Prime Minister Theresa May.
The conservative member of parliament is believed to have received the offer from the country’s new prime minister, Theresa May, largely because he was a prominent figure in the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.
Mr Ayrault added: “I need a partner with whom I can negotiate and who is clear, credible and reliable We cannot let this ambiguous, blurred situation drag on…in the interests of the British themselves”. That may have been one of May’s strategies in appointing Johnson to the job, sidelining a critic who otherwise would have taken aim at her from his column in the Daily Telegraph.
This put him on the opposite side of the argument to President Barack Obama, and Johnson – the New York-born former London mayor – didn’t pull any punches.
“I wish it was a joke but I fear it isn’t”, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt tweeted at the news of Johnson’s appointment.
Challenged over whether Mr Johnson was ready to take over responsibility for intelligence agency MI6, Chancellor Philip Hammond pointed out that he would receive plentiful support from the “highly skilled and competent” civil servants in the “well-oiled machine” of the Foreign Office.
Mogherini’s office declined to comment. But minutes after becoming prime minister on Wednesday, May made Johnson her top diplomat.
When Johnson returned to his London home after the appointment, a neighbor had placed a sign next to Johnson’s house saying: “SORRY WORLD”.
Mr Johnson said he was “very excited” about the prospect of selling Britain on the world stage and said he would set out a “positive” vision for future global relations.
As leading newspapers across the world suggested it was “just Britain’s way of having us on”, Britishers too reacted with incredulity and shock. David Davis, another “leave” campaigner, was given the new role of “secretary of state for exiting the European Union”.
Earlier this year, Johnson won a magazine prize for a limerick depicting Erdogan cavorting with a goat, written to ridicule the Turkish leader’s efforts to have German courts punish a German satirist for insulting him. And Donald Trump didn’t indicate his feelings about Johnson’s statement that he would avoid certain parts of New York City because of the “real risk of meeting Donald Trump”.
Asked Thursday what he expected of working with Johnson, given such comments, Schaeuble said “we in Germany have had good experience with putting comments made during a campaign into the file for election campaigns, and forgetting them on the day after the democratic decision has been made”.
Advertisement
Johnson, who is also the former mayor of London is no stranger to controversy.
