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Boris Johnson faces criticism today after calling Jeremy Corbyn "monstrous" - for saying something he said himself 12 years ago.

The Tory Foreign Secretary slammed the Labour leader in a high-profile press conference with his US counterpart, Rex Tillerson.

It came after Mr Corbyn linked Western foreign policy to the rise of terrorism in his first speech since the Manchester terror attack today.

He said we "must be brave enough" to admit the war on terror has failed, and "that assessment in no way reduces the guilt of those who attack our children."

It prompted outrage from Conservatives.

(Image: PA) (Image: Getty)

Security minister Ben Wallace accused Mr Corbyn of trying to “make a political statement” about the Manchester attack adding: “His timing is appalling."

And Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, claimed the "ill-judged" speech "implied this attack might be our fault."

But it was Mr Johnson's comments that raised eyebrows online.

In the strongest condemnation of Mr Corbyn yet, he said: "Now is not the time to do anything to subtract from the fundamental responsibility of those individuals, that individual in particular, who committed this atrocity.

"And I think it is absolutely monstrous that anybody should seek to do so.”

There was just one problem - Mr Johnson has made similar comments himself.

(Image: Cavendish Press/Pat Isaacs)

And those comments, like Mr Corbyn's, were in the raw aftermath of a terror attack.

Mr Johnson wrote in the Spectator one week after the London bombings: "It is difficult to deny that they have a point, the Told-You-So brigade.

"As the Butler report revealed, the Joint Intelligence Committee assessment in 2003 was that a war in Iraq would increase the terror threat to Britain.

"The Iraq war did not create the problem of murderous Islamic fundamentalists, though the war has unquestionably sharpened the resentments felt by such people in this country, and given them a new pretext.

"The Iraq war did not introduce the poison into our bloodstream but, yes, the war did help to potentiate that poison."

As lawyer Jo Maugham, who spotted the comments, pointed out: "Is there a lie out there too toxic even for you, Boris Johnson? If so, can you tell us what it is?"