Boris Johnson tells Tory activists he is ‘proud’ of history of gaffes

Mr Johnson’s propensity for gaffes marred his time as foreign secretary

Boris Johnson has said he is “proud” of making gaffes during a grilling by Tory activists where he claimed he had sacrificed greater wealth to pursue his prime ministerial ambitions.

The Conservative leadership frontrunner admitted his public blunders had occasionally landed him in trouble but defended many of his comments as ”true and necessary”.

Mr Johnson’s propensity for gaffes marred his time as foreign secretary, including incidents when he recited a colonial poem in a sacred temple in Myanmar and joked about the tourism potential of a Libyan city once “they clear the dead bodies” away.

His most serious blunder came in 2017, when he erroneously told a select committee that jailed British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran.

After Mr Johnson’s comments, the mother-of-one was brought before an Iranian court and told her sentence could be extended.

Asked if he had made any blunders during his career, Mr Johnson said: “Yes, I have, and I am proud of many of them.

“The important point about gaffes is that very often – some of them I regret and I have apologised for – the gaffe turns out to be the round, unvarnished [truth].

“When people say you are making a gaffe, what you are doing is saying something that is true and necessary.”

At the hustings in Darlington, Mr Johnson said he deplored hate speech but argued that people “should be able to speak our minds frankly without the fear that we’re going to get our heads bitten off”.

The ex-cabinet minister floundered when asked for examples of when he had acted for the good of the nation, rather than out of self interest. He eventually said he could have earned more money outside politics.

Pressed on the issue, Mr Johnson said: “It is obviously possible to make more money by not being a full-time politician.

“You have to make sacrifices sometimes and that is the right thing to do.

“Being a full-time politician means that I won’t be able, for instance, to rapidly complete a book on Shakespeare that I have in preparation.”

Mr Johnson resumed his lucrative Daily Telegraph column last year, after resigning from the cabinet over Brexit, for which he is paid £275,000 annually.

As well as his MP’s salary, he also commands large fees as a corporate speaker, with one recent event earning him £42,580.

It comes as the Tory leadership contest enters its critical final stages, as party members received their ballots.