Boris Johnson’s path to No 10 is strewn with (an estimated) 456,789 offensive remarks

New Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks to media outside Number 10, Downing Street in London.

Britain’s Prime Minister for now, Boris Johnson, has long served a constituency of those who (rightly and repeatedly) take vociferous offence. Newsweek, July 23:

“TANK-TOPPED BUMBOYS”: NEW UK PM BORIS JOHNSON’S MOST OUTRAGEOUS QUOTES

Boris waves the Union Jack in China, 2013:

Now can I ask you a question: Why is it that we’re lucky to have so many Chinese students? Is it because of the weather? Is it because we have so many French restaurants? Is it because we have so many communist bicycles?

And Boris on life as a politician, 2004:

The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP, they have run out of better ideas.

Oh, here’s an idea, 2001:

Yes, cannabis is dangerous, but no more than other perfectly legal drugs. It’s time for a rethink, and the Tory party — the funkiest, most jiving party on Earth — is where it’s happening.

Still an ideas man, 2005:

I can’t remember what my line on drugs is. What’s my line on drugs?

Post-colonialism, 2006:

For 10 years we in the Tory party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing.

An apology:

I would like to add Papua New Guinea to my global itinerary of apology. I meant no insult to the people of Papua New Guinea, who I’m sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity in common with the rest of us.

Solidarity with the Chomsky Left, 2004:

The President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy.

Now that’s insight, 2004:

I can hardly condemn UKIP as a bunch of boss-eyed, foam-flecked euro hysterics when I have been sometimes not far short of boss-eyed, foam-flecked hysteria myself.

Into Europe, 1997:

Look, I’m rather pro-European, actually. I certainly want a European community where one can go and scoff croissants, drink delicious coffee, learn foreign languages and generally make love to foreign women.

On women’s beach volleyball at the Olympics, 2012:

They are like glistening wet otters frolicking.

The dubious charms of Portsmouth as a city, 2007:

Too full of drugs, obesity, under­achievement and Labour MPs.

On bygone imperial glory, 2013:

Of the 193 present members of the UN, we have conquered or at least invaded 171 — that is 90 per cent. The only countries that seem to have escaped were places like Andorra and the Vatican City.

A rare non-apology, 2002:

Consider Uganda, pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. Are we guilty of slavery? Pshaw. It was one of the first duties of Frederick Lugard, who colonised Buganda in the 1890s, to take on and defeat the Arab slavers. And don’t swallow any of that nonsense about how we planted the “wrong crops”.

What lies below the surface, 2007:

The awful truth is that people do take me seriously … you must consider the possibility that underneath it all there really may lurk a genuine buffoon.