Facts

After Conservative MP Jamie Wallis came out as trans, Mr Johnson tweeted: “Sharing this very intimate story would have taken an immense amount of courage. Thank you @JamieWallisMP for your bravery, which will undoubtedly support others.

The Conservative Party I lead will always give you, and everyone else, the love and support you need to be yourself.”

The night before, at a Tory party dinner, Mr Johnson had joked: “Good evening ladies and gentleman, or as Keir Starmer would put it, people who are assigned female or male at birth.” 

This is not the first time Johnson has demonstrated insensitivity towards LGBTQ+ issues. Writing in the Spectator in 2000, Johnson attacked what he called “Labour’s appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homoseuality in schools, and all the rest of it.” 

In the Telegraph in 2000, he said: “We don’t want our children being taught some rubbish about homosexual marriage being the same as normal marriage”. 

In his 2001 book, “Friends, Voters, Countrymen”, Johnson compared gay marriage to bestiality, writing that if “gay marriage was okay - and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three me, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog.”

In a 1998 Telegraph column about Peter Mandelson’s resignation from the Labour government, Johnson said the announcement would lead to the blubbing of “tank-topped bumboys” in the “Ministry of Sound nightclub” and “the soft-lit Soho drinking clubs frequented by Mandy and his pals.” 

Verdict

Johnson’s claim that the Tory party will always give trans people “the love and support” they need to be themselves was cynical, offensive and palpably false, as his long record of deeply offensive remarks about LGBT people shows.

We approached Mr Johnson’s office, the Cabinet Office and the No 10 Press Office to give him a chance to comment, but received no response.