How do you kick EU ‘bastards’ out, asks Boris Johnson

The problem with the EU is 'we don't really know who is running it,' said the former UK foreign secretary.

Boris Johnson delivers a speech at JCB's headquarters in Rocester, Staffordshire | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

It is not clear who runs the EU or how to “kick those particular bastards out,” said former U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

“My objection to the EU was not that it was run by foreigners,” Johnson, a Brexiteer who quit Prime Minister Theresa May’s government last year in protest at her Brexit strategy, told a New Delhi conference Saturday, according to AFP. “The problem is we don’t really know who is running it.”

Saying he could not identify the people in charge of the EU’s institutions, or explain what they do, Johnson continued: “I have no idea how to kick those particular bastards out.”

He was quick to clarify: “I’m not saying they are bastards. But millions and millions of people in the U.K. have no idea how the system works. It’s completely cut off to them.”

Johnson said he doesn’t think a second Brexit referendum is possible because the public would be “driven absolutely round the bend by the idea of having to vote on this thing again.”

Johnson said the “Treasury and the whole system” are afraid of a hard Brexit. But unless the U.K. has autonomy over tariffs and regulation, he said, “unless you have the freedom, then stay in. I don’t think the U.K. is going to stay in or that the U.K. should stay in.”

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