Boris Johnson said children of poorer working mothers are more likely to 'mug you on the street corner'

Future prime minister also protested that women no longer able to stay at home had been 'socially gestapoed into the workplace'

Labour seized on more evidence of Boris Johnson’s 'contempt for women and working class people' (AP)

The children of poorer working mothers are more likely to “mug you on the street corner”, Boris Johnson wrote in a book of his journalism, it has emerged.

The future prime minister also raged against women no longer being able to stay at home, saying they had been “socially gestapoed into the workplace”.

Labour seized on the comments as yet more evidence of Mr Johnson’s “contempt for women and working class people”.

“For him to speak about us in such a disgusting manner shows just how out of touch he is. It is clear he only ever stands up for the privileged few,” said Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary.

The controversy comes hard-on-the-heels of criticism of the prime minister for his past attacks on Muslim women, gay men, single mothers and working-class men.

During a live TV election debate, he was accused of having fuelled rampant racism in the UK, but defended his right to “free speech”.

The latest writings to emerge come from a 2006 collection entitled ‘Have I Got Views for You’ – a play on Have I Got News For You, the satirical BBC quiz show which helped make his name.

The future prime minister wrote that the increasing number of female graduates paired up with male graduates – “assortative mating” – allowing them to pool their advantages.

“The result is that, in families on lower incomes, the women have absolutely no choice but to work, often with adverse consequences for family life and society as a whole – in that unloved and undisciplined children are more likely to become hoodies, Neets [not in education, employment or training] and mug you on the street corner,” he warned.

Mr Johnson also wrote: “In the last 30 years an ever-growing proportion of British women have been ‘incentivised’ or socially gestapoed into the workplace, on what seems to me to be the dubious assumption that the harder a women works the happier she will be, when I am not sure that is true of women or anyone else.”

And he claimed that less-qualified men “feel increasingly trampled on by the feminist revolution, and resentful of all these hoity-toity female graduates who won’t give them the time of day.

“What is the answer, my friends? I don’t know. We could try fiscal incentives for heterogamy,” he suggested.

“We could have plot-lines in soap operas, in which double-first girls regularly marry illiterate brickies.”

During the BBC Question Time debate, a questioner told the prime minister: “Racist rhetoric is completely rife in this country. Will you admit that you have personally contributed to this, and say the words: ‘I’m sorry?’”

But Mr Johnson denied his past comments were offensive – claiming they could only be “made to seem offensive” if taken out of context.

"If you go through all my articles with a fine toothcomb and pick out individual phrases, there’s no doubt that you can take out things that can be made to seem offensive,” he told the audience.