Rupert Murdoch has called Britain’s vote to leave the EU “wonderful” and described Donald Trump as a “very able man”.

In his first public comments since last week’s historic referendum vote, the owner of newspapers including the Times, Sun and Wall Street Journal said leaving the EU was like a “prison break … we’re out” and suggested that a UK-US trade deal wouldn’t take long to negotiate.

Long seen as Eurosceptic, Murdoch kept quiet in the referendum campaign while his biggest-selling UK paper, the Sun, took a passionately anti-EU stance.

At an invitation-only business summit hosted yesterday by the Times, which like many of its readers backed remain, Murdoch extolled the virtues of the Brexit vote and the campaign itself.

Referring to England’s disastrous 2-1 loss to Iceland in the Euro 2016 football match on Monday night, he compared the Brexit campaign to Iceland, a team playing to win, while remainers were like England, or “overpaid players expected to be good”.

Murdoch’s comments suggest that the Sun newspaper reflected his own Eurosceptic views, although the paper’s editor, Tony Gallagher, has made no secret of his own dislike of the EU in a series of leaders since he was appointed last September.

In a sign that Boris Johnson may not win immediate backing for any Conservative leadership campaign, Murdoch said that if Johnson backtracked on promises made during the referendum campaign on serious matters – presumably including immigration – this would trigger “another bloody revolt”.

The owner of Fox television station and Sky also made positive comments about Trump, the Republican candidate for the US presidency, and compared his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, unfavourably to her husband.