‘MAKES MY BLOOD BOIL’
Boris Johnson calls Salisbury suspects ‘murderers’ and blasts their ‘ludicrous’ interview – saying if they’re not ‘they can sue me in the courts’
BORIS Johnson has labelled the prime suspects in the Salisbury poisonings “murderers” - saying if they’re not “they can sue me in the courts”.
The angry former Foreign Secretary blasted the pair’s “ludicrous” interview on Russian TV where they denied being involved in the Novichok attack.
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And he said he holds Vladimir Putin’s regime “in absolute contempt” following the failed assassination of Sergei Skripal which killed Dawn Sturgess and left four people gravely ill.
But Mr Johnson did admit his biggest mistake while serving as the UK’s top diplomat was being too soft on Moscow.
Speaking in Washington he said he eventually realised trying to “re-set” relations with the Russian President and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was “a fool’s errand”.
He was attending a black-tie even where he was being honoured with an award, which provided some respite from the damaging revelations about his personal life back home.
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But the ex-Cabinet minister again attacked Theresa May’s Chequers plan, and laid out his alternative vision for running Britain.
However he held off from attacking the Prime Minister directly, despite rumours he is set to launch a bid to topple her.
Speaking after he took to the stage to receive the “Irving Kristol Award” from the American Enterprise Institute, he talked about his mistakes as a minister.
He said: “When I became Foreign Secretary I thought there was no objective reason why we should be quite so hostile to Russia.
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“Yes there were lots of reasons to be suspicious, lots of reasons to be wary, lots of reasons to be very, very cautious.
“But I thought it was possible - I made the classic, classic mistake of thinking it was possible to have a ‘re-set’ with Russia.
“I wanted to engage with Putin and Sergey Lavrov to see if we could start talking about areas, like Syria, areas where we needed to engage, where we needed to engage like tackling Islamist terrorism.
“Then it just became clearer and clearer to me that that was a fool’s errand.”
Russian suspects in Skripal Novichok poisoning say they went to Salisbury as tourists
Mr Johnson added: “And finally on March 4 this year we had this outrageous event in Salisbury, in Wiltshire, when two agents of the Russian GRU were involved in the murder of Dawn Sturgess and the attempted murder of others.
“And you see what’s happening now with these two characters produced in this satirical way by Putin on Russian TV, asked these ludicrous patsy questions, making a mockery of the whole thing.
“And it really makes my blood boil
“I just think that for a Government that wants to be taken seriously, to behave like that, in 2018, we really have to treat them… I hold that regime in absolute contempt.”
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He then added a stinging response to the claims made by suspects Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov that they were merely tourists.
Adding: “And I say to those two guys on Russian TV, they are murderers. And if they dispute that fact, they can sue me, in the courts.”
The interviewer pressed him on the issue, saying if the “biggest mistake of his career” was in “trusting the Russians”.
Mr Johnson replied: “It wasn’t that I trusted them, I believed that I was sufficiently, over-confident, to think that I could reach out and engage and make difference.
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“And they haven’t changed.”
Elsewhere in the interview he talked about his top priority for Britain being “social mobility” – a rival plan to Mrs May’s policy to tackle “burning injustices”.
He said: “If you think back to the great achievements of the Thatcher era, it was about helping people to seize control of their own destiny.
“It was about buying shares or buying their own homes … We need to recover that momentum.
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“One of the reasons people voted to Leave was because they felt they were not getting a fair suck of the sauce bottle, as they say.
“People are stuck in entry-level jobs and they’re not progressing. And we’re not focusing on those issues, we’re not helping people enough.
“People are not being made to feel needed enough. And it’s a serious problem.”
Boris: ‘My plan for Brexit Britain was to beat France in the World Cup’
BORIS Johnson revealed last night his plan for Brexit Britain was to “beat France in the World Cup” – adding “so it’s back to the drawing board”.
Speaking about the country “coming together” he said we must not be “sucked back by the tractor beam of Brussels”.
He said our exit from the EU was “a critical moment for anybody who cares about free markets, about competition, about global free trade”.
During an interview in Washington the ex-Foreign Secretary said: “The EU for all its achievements, it really is no longer right in its current form for the UK.
“We’ve done the right thing. But having done that, we’ve got to make sense of it.
“And there is no point at all in us coming out of the EU only to remain effectively run by the EU.
“If you’re going to take back control, then take back control and use it for a purpose.”
He also revealed his dream for the UK after Brexit, joking: “People need to come together.
“The best thing possible to unify the country would have been if we’d beaten the French in the World Cup. That was my plan.
“It’s back to the drawing board … We came fourth.”
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