What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Boris Johnson attacked said the "bottom 20% of society" produces "chavs, losers and burglars" and 70,000 people in prison, it emerged today.

The Tory leader has been slammed after the latest revelations about his comments on the working class in a 2005 column in The Telegraph.

He wrote: "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.

In comments first unearthed by Business Insider he wrote: "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."

Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner fumed: "These comments further expose the hatred and contempt Boris Johnson feels for working class people in Britain.

(Image: Christopher Furlong)

"This is someone who, from Eton to the Bullingdon Club and beyond, has known nothing but privilege and entitlement.

"And used this position of power to attack single mothers like me, people on low wages who are struggling to make ends meet, and people on benefits, such those with a disability or illness."

It comes after a string of revelations about Boris Johnson's past comments on single mums, working class men and black people in his days as a journalist.

In a 1995 Spectator column he branded the children of single mothers "ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate".

The same column said the "modern British male is useless", adding: "If he is blue collar, he is likely to be drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless."

(Image: PA)

In a 2000 column he said seeing a "bunch of black kids" used to make him "turn a hair" and run away adding: "If that is racial prejudice, then I am guilty."

And in 1996 he branded female delegates at Labour's party conference "totty", adding: "With the fickleness of their sex, they are following the polls."

The latest column to emerge was published in the Daily Telegraph on 8 December 2005 and focused around Gordon Brown's attack on David Cameron as an Old Etonian.

Mr Johnson, an Old Etonian himself, said he "almost blew a gasket" at the remarks, which be branded a "pathetic attempt to curry favour with his rank-and-file followers by making snide remarks about an opponent's background".

His point about the "bottom 20%" was made to say that most modern Labour politicians were not from the poorest in society as they used to be, and were instead "university lecturers, and lobbyists, former heads of the Child Poverty Action Group, and ex-Guardian hacks, and think-tank wallahs, and lawyers, lawyers, lawyers."

He added: "In other words they are almost all of them, Gordon included, as much members of the smug middle classes as the people on the Tory benches opposite.

"What else are the Labour lot doing for the bottom 20 per cent, apart from hauling up the ladders of opportunity?"

But Ms Rayner said today: "Johnson started his career attacking working class communities like mine in newspaper columns, and then joined a Conservative government that attacked our pay, homes, schools and hospitals.

"He has no idea what life is like for people who don’t have everything handed to them on a plate. And he doesn’t care.

"Boris Johnson is the ultimate establishment figure.

"He has always been and always will be on the side of the billionaires, the corporations and the tax dodgers, wanting to line their pockets while he cuts funding for our vital services.

"He is a danger to our NHS, a danger to working class people, and a danger to the fabric of our society."