Boris Johnson once described the poorest 20 per cent of society as being made up of “chavs, losers, burglars and drug addicts”, it has emerged.

The prime minister made the comments during an attack on the Labour government in an opinion piece for the Daily Telegraph in 2005.

Mr Johnson, who was then MP for Henley and editor of Spectator magazine, began by taking exception to Gordon Brown’s dismissal of Tory leader David Cameron as “an old Etonian”.

After accusing the then-chancellor of “rank dishonesty”, Mr Johnson wrote: “He is attempting to re-open a class divide that long ago disappeared, and he and his party are refusing to admit the existence of the real divide in our society.”

Mr Johnson continued: “The real divide is between the entire class of people now reposing their fat behinds on the green and red benches in the Palace of Westminster, and the bottom 20 per cent of society – the group that supplies us with the chavs, the losers, the burglars, the drug addicts and the 70,000 people who are lost in our prisons and learning nothing except how to become more effective criminals.”

Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Show all 5 1 /5 Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Made-up quote for The Times Johnson was sacked from The Times newspaper in the late 1980s after he fabricated a quote from his godfather, the historian Colin Lucas, for a front-page article about the discovery of Edward II’s Rose Palace. “The trouble was that somewhere in my copy I managed to attribute to Colin the view that Edward II and Piers Gaveston would have been cavorting together in the Rose Palace,” he claimed. Alas, Gaveston was executed 13 years before the palace was built. “It was very nasty,” Mr Johnson added, before attempting to downplay it as nothing more than a schoolboy blunder. PA Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Sacked from cabinet over cheating lie Michael Howard gave Boris Johnson two new jobs after becoming leader of the Conservatives in 2003 – party vice-chairman and shadow arts minister. He was sacked from both positions in November 2004 after assuring Mr Howard that tabloid reports of his affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt were false and an “inverted pyramid of piffle”. When the story was found to be true, he refused to resign. PA Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Broken promise to boss In 1999 Johnson was offered editorship of The Spectator by owner Conrad Black on the condition that he would not stand as an MP while in the post. In 2001 he stood - and was elected - MP for Henley, though Black did allow him to continue as editor despite calling "ineffably duplicitous" PA Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson Misrepresenting the people of Liverpool As editor of The Spectator, he was forced to apologise for an article in the magazine which blamed drunken Liverpool fans for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and suggested that the people of the city were wallowing in their victim status. “Anyone, journalist or politician, should say sorry to the people of Liverpool – as I do – for misrepresenting what happened at Hillsborough,” he said. PA Biggest lies told by Boris Johnson ‘I didn’t say anything about Turkey’ Johnson claimed in January, that he did not mention Turkey during the EU referendum campaign. In fact, he co-signed a letter stating that “the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote Leave and take back control”. The Vote Leave campaign also produced a poster reading: “Turkey (population 76 million) is joining the EU”

Labour MP David Lammy told Business Insider, which first unearthed the article, that Mr Johnson’s comments revealed a “disdain for working-class people across the UK”.

The prime minister has already been criticised for a 1995 article in which he attacked single mothers and their “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate” children. Working-class men were also dismissed as “likely to be drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless”.

In his 2005 article titled “The poor are being robbed in Labour’s class war”, Mr Johnson claimed Labour was doing little for the most deprived sections of society “except to keep them exactly where they are, on their run-down estates, voting Labour in the deluded hope of bigger hand-outs”.

Mr Johnson also complained about Labour’s policies for the poorest, suggesting the government was trying to “boss them” into not smoking, not eating or drinking too much, and preventing them from taking part in fox-hunting.

“They are so full of revulsion when they see a chav belting her kids in the supermarket that they seriously contemplate banning smacking,” he added.

He also criticised the decline in social mobility and suggested that “a reforming and compassionate Conservative government” would reduce taxes paid by the bottom 20 per cent.