All the times Boris Johnson flat-out lied UPDATE: Boris Johnson resigns as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has written to Theresa May saying it should not be the […]

Boris Johnson has written to Theresa May saying it should not be the UK’s priority to ensure there is “no border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but rather that it should make sure such a border should not be “significantly harder” – ignoring that the phase one Brexit deal the UK signed in December promises no border would be created.

Such backtracking would surely appall, er, Boris Johnson, who told the House of Commons in November that “there can be no return to a hard border. There can be no hard border. That would be unthinkable, and it would be economic and political madness”.

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The intervention followed comments from Johnson noting that there was no hard border between Camden and Islington, and yet cameras managed to impose the congestion charge between the two. Leaving aside the difference between governing a national border and a driving fee, the congestion charge zone in no part runs along the border of the two boroughs.

These are just the latest in a series of howlers, contradictory remarks, and falsehoods from a politician whose dishonesty has already seen him fired twice in his career. Here are a few of the highlights of the 30 years of the Johnson era.

Boris Johnson: fired from the Times

Johnson was hired by the Times through family connections, and fired for a front-page fabrication within months – on his very first front page story. The story centred around the discovery of the Rose Palace, built by Edward II, who famously had a same-sex lover. Johnson re-told the tale as his “biggest cock-up” in The Independent in 2002.

“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 wrote. “Unfortunately, some linkside don at a provincial university spotted that by the time the Rose Palace was built, Piers Gaveston would long have been murdered. It was very nasty.”

That is a sentence in which “somewhere does a lot of heavy lifting. Having been caught out in a front page fabrication in the UK’s newspaper of record, how did Johnson react? In his own words: “I made matters worse,” he wrote. “I wrote a further story saying that the mystery had deepened about the date of the castle.”

Boris Johnson: creator of the euromyth

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Having been fired from the Times for fabricating two stories, Boris Johnson almost immediately secured a new job for the Telegraph and became Brussels correspondent, where he was credited with creating the “euromyth”, the cavalcade of stories claiming the EU was threatening Britain’s way of life. Johnson headlines included “Threat to British pink sausages” (you may have noticed they’re still on the shelves in 2018) and “cheese row takes the biscuit” – sparking a whole generation of imitators across British journalism and helping fuel the UK’s euroscepticism.

Lest anyone think Johnson had changed his ways, in his May 2016 launch speech for Vote Leave’s bus tour (more on that later), he said it was “absolutely crazy” the EU was setting rules on the shape of bananas, a euromyth largely debunked since 1994.

Boris Johnson the diplomat

The man who is now as Foreign Secretary the UK’s chief diplomat and negotiator has a lurid track record of wildly insulting and often racist language. In a 2002 Telegraph column Johnson referred to black people as “picanninies” and used the term “watermelon smiles” in the same article.

The same year he said of Africa that “the continent may be a blot, but it is not a blot upon our conscience”, adding its problem was “that we are not in charge any more”.

As Foreign Secretary 14 years later, Johnson referred to Africa as a “country” in a speech to Conservative Party Conference.

Johnson’s insults manage to span decades and continents: mere months before becoming Foreign Secretary, Johnson suggested Barack Obama may have an “ancestral dislike” of Britain thanks to his “part-Kenyan” heritage, and in the same month won a competition for the most offensive poem about Turkish president Recep Erdoğan, calling him a “wankerer from Ankara”. Three months later he had to meet Erdoğan as part of his official role.

Boris Johnson sacked, again

In November 2004, Boris Johnson was a shadow arts minister under Michael Howard, Conservative Vice-Chair, and editor of the Spectator – when it was reported in multiple tabloids that he had a years-long affair with one of the magazine’s columnists, which had resulted in two terminated pregnancies.

Johnson publicly stated the allegations were untrue, calling them an “inverted pyramid of piffle”, and made the same assurances they were false to Michael Howard. When proof of the allegations was presented, Howard asked Johnson to resign, only for him to refuse and therefore be fired for dishonesty, for the second time in his career.

“We send the EU £350 million a week”

Boris Johnson was one of the most frequent and enthusiastic passengers on Vote Leave’s now infamous Brexit bus, whose central claim was refuted not only by its opposing campaign, but also numerous independent factcheckers, and even by the UK’s Statistical Authority, the country’s official statistics watchdog.

During the EU referendum campaign, Johnson was one of three MPs who ceremonially burned a huge novelty cheque for £350 million as a photo-opportunity to promote the dubious figure, which was given credit by a senior Vote Leave staffer for helping to swing the referendum result.

However, even as most Leave campaigners backed off from the statistic, Johnson has repeatedly doubled down, writing in September 2017 “yes – once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control of roughly £350 million per week” – an untrue claim for which he was reprimanded for “clear misuse of official statistics” by Sir David Norgrove, who governs ministers’ use of figures.

Johnson’s response was to ignore yet again the official reprimand, accuse the watchdog of politicisation, then claim in January, without evidence, that £350 million a week was in a fact a “gross underestimate” of what the UK sends to the EU.