10 quotes by Boris Johnson that are even more terrifying now he's foreign secretary

One of Theresa May’s first decisions as prime minister was to appoint Boris Johnson as her foreign secretary.

Yes, one of her first acts as leader of our country was to give control of our secret services to this man:

Johnson's habit for bluster often lands him in trouble, and people are never sure about his level of seriousness: is he being tongue-in-cheek or accidentally courting controversy?

As we send him out into the world as our most senior diplomat, here's a look back at some of his most controversial moments:

1. On Hillary Clinton, Telegraph 2007

She's got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital.

2. On Bashar Al-Assad, Telegraph March 2016

Hooray, I say. Bravo – and keep going.

3. On black people, 2010

What a relief it must be for Blair to get out of England. It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies.

4. On his time as editor of Spectator

Johnson was heavily criticised back in 2008 about a Spectator article which was published when he was editor of the publication. Ken Livingston and a black lawyer accused him of condoning racism after he allowed an article to be published which said:

Orientals ... have larger brains and higher IQ scores. Blacks are at the other pole.

5. On Barack Obama, The Sun April 2006

The part-Kenyan President [has an] ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender.

6. On Malaysian women attending university, 2013

At the World Islamic Economic Forum Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that 68 per cent of women were going to be attending university, to which Johnson quipped:

[Female students went to university because they] have got to find men to marry.

7. On the EU and the Nazis, The Sunday Telegraph 2016

Johnson claimed that the past 2,000 years had seen failed attempts to recreate the "golden age" of the Roman Empire.

Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods.

8. On Turkish president Tayyip Erdoğan, The Spectator, May 2016

There was a young fellow from Ankara

Who was a terrific wankerer.

Till he sowed his wild oats

With the help of a goat

But he didn’t even stop to thankera.

9. On Eurosceptics

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.

10. On voting Conservative

Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.

If you are in any doubt about how the world sees the UK following Johnson’s appointment, watch US state department spokesperson Mark Toner react to the news:

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